Not This Again
by Miss Whoniverse
Summary: Zuko and Katara; not your average capture fic! Seriously, it isn't. I've read enough of them, and wished for something different enough times, that I'm doing it myself. Sometimes you have to take matters into your own hands!  currently suspended due to life
1. Chapter 1

Zuko read the note carefully, with Katara reading over his shoulder with some difficulty as he was much taller than her. You could feel the sexual tension rolling off them.

"Why has the author written her note this way?" he wondered huskily.

"Maybe it's because you're so attractive," suggested Katara, attaching herself to his side like some sort of octopus. He quickly arranged his face into angst mode to ensure maximum attractiveness.

"No," the author said, shrugging. "It's just because nobody reads them otherwise."

**With that point made, please READ this :P**

**Guys, I re-read this story and realised something – I ACTUALLY LIKE IT IN THE EARLY BITS. I like what I was doing and how I wrote the characters, but I hate the way the plot went. It just annoyed me, and that's why it ended up dead-ending at about chapter 10 and being given away. However, Iceblossom22, the author I gave it to, doesn't seem to have continued it, so I'm going to reclaim this little relic and give it another go. The quality won't be too different to how it was two years ago when I started, because I'm not scrapping it and starting again, simply editing.**

**I hope people like it as much as, or more than, they did in the first place!**

OOOOOO

Flying high over thick trees, Aang hummed a song to himself while Sokka chewed a piece of grass and Katara draped herself boredly in Appa's saddle – if you could call it that. It was more like a small room. Glancing over at her brother, Katara was forcibly reminded of Jet, which irked her to no end.

It had been an extremely uneventful day, heading towards the Earth Kingdom in search of an Earthbending teacher for Aang. No fireballs hurled at them from below, no red fire balloons chasing them from behind, no pouring rain hammering them from above. At first it had been a nice change, but the three of them were somewhat shocked to realise that there was absolutely no fun or excitement to fill in the long hours of flight when there was no imminent threat of abduction or stranding.

Sitting up finally, Katara twisted, stretching her back.

"I never thought I'd say this," she yawned, "but I miss Zuko."

"I never thought I'd say this," Sokka replied, "but I agree."

"It _is _kinda boring without something to run from, huh?" beamed Aang over his shoulder, cheerfulness – as always – ready and willing. "But don't worry! I'm sure some kind of danger will show up next time we land! It always does." They lapsed into silence again.

"Ooh, guys, guess what!" said Katara abruptly after a few more minutes of silence, rummaging through her bags. "We're going to have to land before sundown and find some shops. We're out of meat!" She was thrilled at this turn of events, now they had an excuse to go into a town and probably run into trouble.

"WHAT!" cried Sokka, while Katara and Aang did happy dances in their seats. "NO! AANG – LAND!"

"Sokka, we have hours until the sun sets-" began Aang, laughing at Sokka's stricken expression.

"NO! AANG, WE'RE LANDING AT THE NEXT TOWN WE SEE, AND THAT IS FINAL!" Sokka lived in constant fear of going a day without any meat.

"Alright, alright, I'm pretty sure there's one up ahead somewhere, it's been ages since we last flew over civilisation," said Katara, still smirking.

"Good! I'm starving!"

"Sokka, you haven't mentioned your stomach since before lunch – which, incidentally, was only about an hour ago."

"I wasn't hungry before!"

"So you just _suddenly _decided you were famished once I announced there was no meat?"

"That's the thing, isn't it," said Sokka testily. "If you don't want me to get hungry, DON'T TELL ME THERE'S NO FOOD!"

"We all want what we can't have!" called Aang cheerfully from the front, breaking up the argument before it started, just in case.

"Wrong. We just want meat."

The other two laughed at Sokka, and Katara lay back down. Sokka was still going on about which types of meat he was going to buy, and how he was _so _hungry, and after a few minutes of non-stop food talk, Momo sank his little teeth into Sokka's arm to keep him quiet.

OOOOOO

Hours later, they were all getting a little worried.

"Is it just me," said Sokka in one of the rare moments of sane seriousness, "or has it been a strangely long time since we last found a town?"

"It's weird," said Katara quietly, leaning over Appa's side as far as she dared. "Night will fall soon. I mean, it's not like it matters that much; we have easily enough non-meat food to keep us going for days-" at this, Sokka groaned, "-but... it just doesn't seem right, does it?"

Aang stayed quiet, troubled eyes looking ahead for a spot to land. Appa had been flying all day and Aang could feel the rumbling of the bison's stomach.

"Well, it's back to nuts and berries, I guess," said Sokka moodily, not complaining too much for once because he was a little more worried about the lack of civilisation.

Momo seemed cheerful about the food idea, at least.

OOOOOO

Zuko was bored out of his mind. All day, there had been peaceful and uninterrupted sailing in the Earth Kingdom waters. Deprived of any recent leads, they were just sailing up the coast in the hopes of spotting the – rather unmistakeable – flying bison, but nothing had happened.

He'd reclined on his bed, had lunch, brooded around the decks, done a little Firebending, and was now back to pacing around his quarters with nothing to do. _I'm the Prince of the Fire Nation, and I'm bored. This is ridiculous._

OOOOOO

"I'm SO BORED," said Sokka as they sat around their little campfire. Katara made a non-committal noise that was probably agreement, and Aang just stretched restlessly. "You know what? I'm going to go hunting. We have no meat, and I NEED MEAT. I'm going to go get meat. Anyone wanna come help me get meat? So we can eat meat, because meat is good. And I _need_ meat. We all need meat, so I'm going to go get-"

"Just go already!"

"Fine, fine," he said defensively, voice comically high with his hands up. "Come on, boomerang, let's go get us some REAL food."

Momo, offended, let out a squawky noise and gathered his berries close.

Katara stood up too. "I need to find some water for the skins, and I don't need fresh water for that. We're pretty close to the coast; I'll come with you, Sokka."

"Great!" he said cheerfully. "Aang?"

"Nah, I'm going to stay here and brush Appa. He's starting to shed now because it's warmer than down south where we were before," said Aang, ever present grin on his face. "You two have fun! Don't run into Zuko!"

"We're in the middle of nowhere," giggled Katara. "If he happens to materialise nearby after no sign of him for days, he deserves to catch us."


	2. Chapter 2

**I don't title my chapters, it never seems quite right and nobody cares anyway. Cheers!**

The bay formed a distinct crescent, like the moon at its most curvy, and the sand was a pale whitish under the moonlight. The tree line stayed at a constant distance from the water, so it formed like a secondary crescent a little way behind them. The sand was very fine and dusty, still holding some residual warmth from the day that had already passed on.

Katara breathed in and out happily, the freezing cold air reminding her of home. She was in her element in every sense of the word, and it relaxed her immensely.

Sokka, however, was sitting with his arms around his knees, staring with a comically distressed expression into the bushes, willing something to appear that he could catch and eat. As Katara waterbent to her heart's content, filling her waterskins and making 3D patterns absently with her toes, Sokka scanned the area repeatedly.

"I can't believe we have no meat," he grumbled to himself for the thousandth time. "I can't believe there's nothing bigger than a bat on this island to hunt." Katara was barely listening; he'd been saying the same things over and over again for the past half an hour. "I can't belie- THERE'S SOMETHING!"

Without another word, he leaped to his feet and took off towards the edge of the beach, quickly disappearing into the edge of the trees. Katara span on her heel, starting after him with an annoyed shout, but her throat closed and she froze as she heard _him_ yell at _her_.

"KATARA, IT'S-" he started, but there was a muffled scuffle and a distinct thump, then his voice cut off.

For a too-long moment, nothing moved. It was one of those times where a single second seems to stretch out into many and there is no sound; nothing moves, for what seems like longer than normal.

Then she shook her head and gritted her teeth, running backwards until the water was halfway up her legs. She breathed in through her nose and out through her mouth, feeling the tide with a shiver. The ocean was her most powerful ally, and she knew nobody would be able to sneak up on her from behind her without her noticing the disturbance.

Satisfied that there was nothing out of the ordinary in the water or coming to ambush her from behind, she focussed on the tree line. Eyes scanning around where Sokka had run into, she kept looking back to one patch of shadow in particular. There was nothing about it to set it apart from all the other patches of shadow around, but she couldn't stop looking back at it uneasily. Her eyes refused to be distracted, staring at that one point.

The corner of her eye noted movement off to the right of that spot, but after a second's assessment, she smirked and turned back to her original point of interest.

"Throwing rocks to distract someone only works on idiots," she said quietly, knowing that her voice would carry through the still night to the shadows. "Why don't you come out?"

There was a moment of silence and she waited, still slightly crouched in her battle stance. There was a faint rustle, and she saw Sokka's assailant.

She wasn't at all surprised to be staring at Prince Zuko. He looked slightly smug, and seemed not to be thinking too much about the situation at hand, rather planning ahead to whatever his next move was going to be. _Provided he lives through this one_, thought Katara.

"Well, well, well, what do we have here?" he said softly, still walking slowly towards her, hands raised in preparation of fire. He stopped a few metres from her, head cocked to one side. "You look like you're ready to _fight _me! That seems a little stupid. Why don't you just surrender now and save me the trouble?"

Katara raised one eyebrow, genuinely surprised at his lack of fear. Had he not looked around at the setting..?

"No answer? Come on, I'm getting bored over here." His smirk was starting to get on her nerves. "Do you really think you can beat me?"

"Do you really think you can beat _me_?" she replied, raising the same eyebrow again.

"What are you talking about? I'm Fire Nation Royalty. I am being trained by the great Dragon of the West. I'm one of the best firebenders around. How can you possibly expect to beat me?" Zuko was in no particular rush to get the fight going. There was nowhere for the girl to run, and he always enjoyed a good gloat.

"You really are thick, aren't you?" she said calmly, raising her hands and pulling two twin streams of water from the ocean lapping at her legs. "Not only am I standing in the ocean," she started, curling the water up into spheres while he heated up his hands and adopted a battle stance in anticipation, "but I am standing in the ocean in the middle of the night," she continued, making the spheres orbit her slowly. Zuko waited, knowing she wasn't going to attack until she had proved her point – whatever it was. "Not only am I standing in the ocean in the middle of the night," she continued, taking a leisurely step forwards, "I'm standing in the ocean in the middle of the night with a full moon rising right behind you."

Jerking, he whipped his head around, staring in dismay and the cool grey orb hanging in the sky. Turning back slowly, he looked at her with something close to fear. _Close_ to fear. Not quite.

"And last, but not least, I've had some practise since last time I saw you," she smirked. He conjured up some fireballs in anticipation, tiring of the dialogue. "You're looking at Sifu Katara, waterbending Master."

He almost bailed, but his pride held him still.

"Good luck," she finished sweetly, and before he could react – the water was upon him.

Aang was only slightly surprised when Katara walked into the camp, supporting a half-unconscious (or as the optimistic Air Nomads would say; half-conscious!) Sokka with her shoulders. He didn't even ask; he just raised an eyebrow.

"We have to fly away now, don't we?" he said rhetorically. Katara nodded anyway, and dropped Sokka. "Poor Appa."

"Yes, poor Appa," mumbled Sokka blurrily. "We wouldn't want to make him fly a little, huh? I mean, being assaulted and knocked unconscious and then having your sister freeze the Prince of the evil Fire Nation in a block of ice and heal you and shuffle away as fast as possible is a piece of cake, isn't it?"

"You guys always get into trouble," complained Aang, but he was laughing at Sokka's expression as he threw the stuff onto Appa. "Come on, get on."

"I can't use my legs yet," said Sokka matter-of-factly. Aang wasted no time with words and simply made the air carry him.

"Coming, Katara?" said Aang, holding out his hand from Appa's saddle.

"Yeah," she said, turning back to him and pulling herself into the saddle with his hand. "Let's go find where his ship is and freeze it in a block of ice as well!"

As they flew out towards the bay, they could see far below them a little red figure in Fire Nation garb steaming his way out of a huge ice pillar.

"Whoa," said Aang in amazement. "You've really outdone yourself this time, Katara, that thing is higher than the trees!"

"Full moon, Aang, full moon," she said in satisfaction. "Now where's that boat?"


	3. Chapter 3

**Disclaimer: HURR HURR I OWN AVATAR. HURR.**

They didn't end up freezing the boat, because Aang said something about how anger was harmful or something, and revenge is something-something. _Whatever_, thought Sokka moodily.

He had been forced to resort to _fishing _to catch some 'meat'. Not that fish is meat; it's just that when you're flying over the ocean to avoid being surprised by sea-faring Firebenders, fish is pretty much the best you're going to get.

And... well, when he said that _he _had been forced to resort to fishing, what he meant was that he sent Katara down to fish for him, under the pretence of 'training'.

Katara was seeing if she could keep up with Appa from the surface of the water below – running on water while fishing. Sokka laughed despite his meat-less situation at Aang's awed expression. The little Airbender was staring over Appa's side at Katara far below, and he had an expression halfway between speechless admiration and lip-biting anxiety. Sokka knew that he himself had a similar expression as he watched his little sister frantically propelling herself along, but that didn't matter.

Her legs and arms were working frantically, almost comically, and he was amazed that she wasn't tired already. As she passed over schools of fish, she would messily gesture with one hand and violently pull one or more out of the water which she sent up to Sokka, along with waves of uncontrolled water. All this multitasking took a great deal of concentration and she didn't even notice her fatigue.

That is, until she caught sight of a plume of smoke behind her as she avoided a swell. There was a small red speck beneath it which she quickly identified as a boat - red. Fire Nation ship. In fact, it was probably the one that Aang hadn't let her wreck. She pouted at that piece of knowledge.

High above, the boys became distracted as Sokka lost his grip on a particularly big fish which was flopping around and disrupting the small piles of fish that had already become still. Attempts were made to recapture it, resulting in Sokka elbowing Aang in the head.

Seriousness had set in down below. As soon as her arms were still, even for just a second, Katara instantly felt them burning from the effort that she hadn't noticed before in all her distraction. It was like they were on fire – a fitting analogy, given the circumstances of her distraction.

To top the perfect situation off, her feet lost their hold on the surface and she didn't even have time to hold her breath before she slid under the water quietly and without any fuss, sporting a slightly surprised expression.

Sokka and Aang, laughing hard and trying to catch the frantically flipping creature on Appa's back, didn't notice a thing.

She felt herself sinking with growing fear, her arms floating idly up at shoulder level. She held her breath as much as she could but her burning muscles happily used up all her oxygen and it wasn't long before her lungs were on fire too. Kicking out weakly with her legs, she found that her Waterbending wasn't working either.

Appa had seen her go under and was slowing himself down as fast as he could, his momentum making it hard, and he growled with the effort. Momo was chattering frantically in a grinning Aang's ear and pulling Sokka's hair towards the side. As Appa dipped towards the water, Aang floated out above the surface, still grinning.

"Katara," he called, laughing. When his only response was the peaceful lapping of the waves, the smile slid off his face like an egg. "Katara!"

Appa made a long, low sound and sank onto the surface of the water, dipping his head under to look around. Aang followed suit, feeling panic clump in his chest and making his breathing tight, like there was a rock there.

Wasting no time, he swam downwards, ignoring the stinging in his eyes and bending the water to help him move down. Just as he was about to surface for air and a look around, he caught sight of a dark shadow far below him.

Her hair was floating peacefully around her head, splayed out like that of an angel. Her arms and legs were similarly adrift. This was the first sign that something was wrong – she was still. Propelling himself closer with all haste, he saw with alarm that there were bubbles of air blowing from her mouth. Her eyes were closed.

In an instant, everything seemed to slow down, and the fear that choked his senses disappeared light a light turning off. His muscles tensed and there was a split second of transition where he found himself opening his mouth to yell into the water in surprise... and then there was silence.

He felt like he could do anything! What's that over there…? – ah! Trouble. A girl. He had a job to do.

His whole being focused on the girl hanging in the water before him, and somewhere inside he registered that the water around him was eerily lit, but he disregarded it. He couldn't even remember his name, all he felt was the power in his body and all he saw was the goal.

He couldn't remember the girl's name, either.

Suddenly there was movement, and he wasn't fully aware of how he got from one place to another, and suddenly it didn't matter. Suddenly he was next to her, arms around her, suddenly he was breaking the surface of the water, suddenly he was on his bison and launching into the air on the animal's back, suddenly the girl's brother was next to him, suddenly... there was no impending danger anymore.

Just like that, he woke. Suddenly he remembered her name and the fire stopped burning in his chest.

"Katara!"

"... still can't see anyth- oh! He pulled her out, he got her! She's unconscious, I think, she isn't moving..." called the man out to the intently listening crew. "His arms... he's got a funny glow about him, he's – oh! No! They're flying away, quick, follow, go faster! They're off!"

A nameless soldier, he was. Standing in the control room, eye pressed intently to the telescope eyepiece, he called out everything he could see about the situation unfolding - how the girl stopped running on the sea and caught sight of them, the girl disappeared, the bison stopped, the Avatar leaped into the water in pursuit, nothing happened for a moment, the water was lit from underneath...

Zuko, his uncle, and four or five other crew members were listening with rapt attention, but as they were told the bison was speeding away, they were quickly back in action.

As the boat picked up speed, Prince Zuko watched the shape of the bison a fair way ahead of them, and considered.

"Uncle," he said, in the voice of someone who knew he commended attention, and didn't have to earn it. "Why was the Water tribe girl in the water?" He spoke with bored curiosity, giving the impression that the question was just a tidbit that occurred to him, not something he cared about... probably right.

"I dare say she was waterbending."

"Obviously," said Zuko impatiently, turning to look irritably at the old man, who was smirking. "But why was she unconscious? _Isn't_ she a bender?"

He phrased it as though he didn't know she was; and didn't really care. His Uncle thought for a moment.

"Well, she was fine before she caught sight of us," he speculated mildly. "Perhaps she was so paralysed by fear that she lost control of her powers?"

He didn't sound like he thought this was the case, and neither did Zuko who, in fact, knew _quite well _that the girl was a master in her art and not likely to be distracted by a ship in the distance.

In fact, if he knew her at all - which he liked to think he did since she was his enemy and you're always supposed to know your enemies – he would have said that she was more likely to turn around and try to capsize their vessel.

They picked up speed in pursuit of the fluffy sky-whale, and he made an effort to brace himself mentally knowing that the group would be at their most defenceless at this point, with the Avatar tired after his exertion and their only other fighter unconscious. All bending out of action, they wouldn't be able to repel an attack. They were defenceless.

As that thought struck him, another thought occurred to him.

"But Uncle," he said suddenly, "obviously she's a waterbender, and she went under the surface… why did it fuss them so much? The Avatar was so distressed - enough even to reach the Avatar state!"

"Because," said Iroh, now right beside him. Zuko turned and met his eye. His uncle's eyes flicked to the left side of Zuko's face, then back. "Waterbenders can drown, just as firebenders can be burned."


	4. Chapter 4

**Howdy! There have been a lot of hits on this story, but only two people reviewing, aaww – I'm not one of those people who holds a chapter hostage until she receives a certain number of reviews, because that's goddamn stupid, but everyone knows that inside us all is a starving review-demon. Feed me.**

**Also, to clear up the timeline (or lack of), I am disregarding the 'exact' events and order of the series, and instead choosing to set my own vague one. Currently, we're several comfortable months from the comet – say, four or so – and they've done the whole swamp thing. They don't go see the Rumble tournament, and instead Aang knows that the girl from his magic swampy vision is blind, and an earthbender who waits and listens. The hunt is on!**

**3 to all!**

When she woke up, she was mildly surprised to find Sokka and Aang crowding around her, and even Momo was happy enough to drop a few of his hard-earned berries into her lap.

She sat up groggily; throat sporting that nasty burning feeling it gets when it has had seawater in it. She swallowed painfully a few times before testing out her bending by summoning her. Sokka and Aang watched quietly while she took a few swigs, and Aang smiled for the first time in several hours when she started tracing her hands around her torso, searching for any signs of water left in her lungs.

"I got it all," he said proudly, and she smiled at him, making his heart beat just that little bit faster. "There was a lot in there..."

His voice betrayed how worried he'd been; sickened by his helplessness as she'd lay slumped in the saddle, motionless. Katara felt a pang of guilt at making him worry, and then she remembered what had caused the whole thing in the first place.

"The sh-" she attempted, and she was slightly surprised to find that her voice didn't make a sound. It was as though she was just breathing out, and she had to cough and clear her throat and try oddly hard before her voice came back at all. It was just a little squeak at first, but she opened it all once she got that little bit working. "What about the ship?"

Sokka, relieved to have her back in the land of the living without any signs of dying soon, slung an arm around her shoulders and turned her to face behind them; pointing out to sea. The ship was a clearly defined shape behind them and she could even make out – with a pang of fear – figures moving around on the deck.

"It's closer!" she said abruptly, scrambling to the back of Appa's saddle. "So much closer! How long was I out?"

"Not too long," said Aang cheerfully, with a big grin. He felt so relieved that he laughed as though nothing had happened. "But they sped up when they caught sight of us, since we stopped."

"Sorry," she muttered guiltily, eyes tracing the red shape before her. "I was doing well though! How many fish do we have?"

"Six good big ones, and like ten little ones," said Sokka proudly, "but they're gonna go bad Katara, I meant to say, we need you to... er... well, I mean, if you're... um..."

"I can still freeze a fish," she said dryly, crawling over to the dead fish and wrinkling her nose.

"Aang, take us down closer so Katara doesn't have to pull it from so far awa-" started Sokka, but Katara made a noise of irritation.

"Sokka!" she reprimanded. "I drowned, yes, but that doesn't mean I can't freeze some fish with water from fifty metres below us!"

Apparently realising how odd this sounded, she pouted. "Well, it doesn't."

Aang just grinned once again, happy she had returned to her usual stance of 'don't you dare try to help me if I don't need it', craning his neck to watch her.

She leaned over the side with the ease of someone who knew exactly what they were doing, and reached her arms downwards, clawing her fingers in effort. Two thick streams of water shlooped themselves upwards, spiralling towards her.

Once the water reached Appa, Katara froze the fish with little effort – at least, she pretended that it didn't take any effort. Aang, glancing back over at the oncoming vessel, floated back to the steering position and took Appa higher.

"We've got a bit of work to do to lose them!" he said cheerfully to the bison, who grumbled in response. "Yeah, I know… it's YOU who does the work."

"And don't we love ya for it," grinned Sokka lazily as he flopped down onto his back in the saddle. "Wake me up when we get there!"

"Where?"

"Wherever we're going."

OOOOOO

It wasn't often that Zuko would firebend quite so… 'recreationally', if you will. He was leaning against the ship's railing, absently staring in the direction they were heading, while tossing a small shot of fire between his hands. It soothed his nerves (if you could really call them that) to absently play with his element, though he would never have done it if he wasn't alone.

The Avatar was constantly elusive to him. He knew that the boy had essentially mastered water, and supposed that he must be searching for an earthbending teacher. It was odd, then, that the group was continuously moving around. Wouldn't it make more sense to stay put and find a master?

The only explanation, of course, was that he was taking small periods of tutelage with many teachers. The group was refusing to stay in place for too long, lest Zuko (or anyone else) catch them, so they travelled and increased Aang's knowledge more slowly. _Certainly a clever way to go about it, _thought Zuko. _The slower progress is certainly worth the added security of not setting down in one place for too long_. Clearly, he was dealing with tricky, savvy teenagers. He needed to get himself into gear before the Avatar mastered earth! Every day that passed, every capture attempt that failed, every botched mission; all saw the Avatar getting closer and closer to mastery of the elements!

Of course, Zuko didn't know that he was completely wrong in this assumption and that in fact they were aimlessly searching for a blind chick Aang had hallucinated about, and he had no grasp of earth at all… but whatever.

Anyway, the group would have to stop for supplies sooner or later, as they did periodically. Sometimes Zuko would get there in time to make an attempt to catch them – which invariably failed. This time, he thought, maybe it would be better to follow and wait until one of the other two wandered off alone. _It must happen sometimes,_ he reasoned with himself. Zuko could wait until one of them wandered off alone before trying to abduct them. And, of course, the Avatar was so damn _good_ that he would pursue them and try to help. Or, maybe, he should just _take them out_ so that the Avatar was without backup, as well as being devastated and trying to help his friends.

Hm. That would make capturing him far easier, yet Zuko's immediate thought _no, I'm _not _going to do that_.

Catching the flame in one hand and firing it away from himself, Zuko turned and stomped towards the galley. Food sounded good, and he was annoying himself. Increasingly of late he had found himself dismissing strategies and ploys and tactics for the same reason he had spoken up in the War Room all those years ago.

_I'm not a bad enough person_.

He was in no confusion – he wasn't frustrated, trying to 'figure out' why he felt certain ways about certain things. He knew exactly why he reacted the way he did to different levels of… atrocity. He wasn't a bad (_enough_, he mentally affirmed,) person.

It was, truly, a certain irony that in order to capture the Avatar and restore his honour – honour lost by speaking up against the unspeakable – he was probably going to have to commit acts that he found to be deplorable as well. The Avatar was just proving too tricky to capture without employing some shady tactics, like hostaging or even murder.

This knowledge wasn't particularly upsetting. What _really _got him angry, was that he didn't know what choice he had in the matter. What alternative was there? Living in banishment forever? His father had left him gone for years. Had Ozai simply been trying to prove a point, or teach a lesson, he would have resummoned his son by now. Obviously, that wasn't going to happen, so Zuko's only condition of return was to fulfil his father's request and capture the Avatar.

_I don't deserve this_, was Zuko's last, pissed off thought as he descended the stairs. With the full intent of banishing his thoughts and enjoying some food, he opened the galley doors and walked in. Taking a seat and waiting for some food – smelled like spice-roasted fish tonight – Zuko found there was an uncomfortable phrase stubbornly floating around his head.

_I'm not a bad person…._


	5. Chapter 5

**Disclaimer: I diss the notion that I claim Avatar. Oh god, imagine if I did... imagine if **_**any**_** of us did. The shenanigans I would get up to... nobody likes Mai, right?**

Her feet pounded the ground as she whipped around the corner, thoroughly lost but determined not to stop. Her heart was racing and she felt like it might thump its way out of her chest with fear if she stopped running.

It wasn't a bad dream – she knew exactly where she was, where she had been, and where she was trying to go. She also knew exactly what she was running from.

"Can't go one day," she muttered under her breath, ducking a cabbage stand and narrowly avoiding a group of people as she ripped around another corner. "Not one La forsaken _day_," she continued, hissing to herself as a means of coping.

"Just _had _to go off on my own, just _had _to duck off to look at the waterskins, just _had _to..." she continued in this fashion as she slowed down and ducked into a tan coloured alley, finding it too sunny and bright for her tastes. Weren't alleys supposed to be all dark and foreboding and filled with water?

She knew her pursuer was still after her – not because she could see him, but because she could feel it. The moon was waiting on the outskirts of reality to bloom from the horizon, but the god-forsaken sun refused to go down without persisting for a few hours. However, her intuition was already sharpening ever so slightly, and maybe that was what made her so sure she had to get away.

"It's not Zuko," she murmured to herself, edging quietly down the alley and away from the opening, searching for another way out. "Not his style. I don't know who it- oh _for LA'S SAKE_, this is a _dead end_!"

"Right you are, girly," said a smooth voice from behind her. Whipping around and raising her arms as though she actually had some water to fight with, she noticed absently how the alley was cast into alley-esque shadow by the large figure standing in its opening.

Cursing under her breath, she surveyed her options. This wasn't one of those political battles or bending clashes or save-the-world fights... this was a girl running from a guy who had been chasing her through near deserted streets because he was sadistic like that.

She didn't even know him, and she'd been running from him for... for how long? It felt like hours, but thinking back, she realised it had only been a minute or so.

Her throat tightened as he came closer, and she realised for the umpteenth time that she was an idiot for not learning hand to hand combat. Sure, she was a master in her element and only under extreme disadvantages would she ever lose a bending battle, but in hand to hand combat between her and someone like Zuko... it was like making a wet kitten fight a wall. And the wall is on fire.

Realising with all due distress that the man had been coming closer the whole time, she backed up – straight into the wall – and acted as though she knew what she was doing. Trying to be quick about it, she surveyed her options like she'd been trying to do before she got distracted with kitten analogies – option one was to fight. That was out; no water.

Option two was to scream. Very loudly. This was still open to her. Option three and all options further than option two decided not to grace Katara's mind with their presence and she couldn't think of anything she could really do.

Except yell. And scream. And thrash. And bellow insults. And yell. And scream.

_Oh yeah, this one's in the bag_, she thought wryly to herself. Opening her mouth and taking in a deep breath, she suddenly found herself pinned to the wall uncomfortably hard, a calloused hand the size of her face pressing over her mouth.

"It'll hurt more if you scream," he whispered, and as he bent his head close to her face and her heart started thumping like there was no tomorrow, seriousness set in.

As one of his hands snaked dangerously close to her chest, her eyes hardened and she kicked out without thinking, foot striking his sensitive area with the best sound she'd ever heard. _The sweet crunch of justice, _she thought, but then he stood up furiously and pulled a fist back to strike her.

It was a huge fist. She was frozen in place and only came to life in the nick of time, jerking herself to one side with half a yell. He missed her face, but caught her where the shoulder meets the collarbone, which she was shocked to hear crack. She choked back a scream and tripped back into the corner of the alley, hand hovering tenderly above her wildly painful injury.

The man grabbed her shoulder roughly – thankfully, her relatively uninjured shoulder – and looked like he was going to hit her again. Feeling the pain intensify at the jostling, she yelled out in pain and fury, and kicked weakly in his direction.

Angry at herself for being hurt and unable to fight back, she was just thinking that she'd rather a million Zukos over this guy any day when a streak of fire shot over her head and grazed the man's shoulder.

Just like that.

Needless to say, that was a bit of a shock, but it was soon forgotten as an even more shocking shock presented itself.

Zuko materialised.

Upon reflection, she realised he'd jumped off the roof above her, even decked out as he was in all his armour and funny hair. He'd landed hard against her assailant, and the man had been knocked off his feet without ado.

Zuko glanced at her for a second and decided she was probably too out of it to run away yet. She was staring at him with her head cocked to one side and a strange expression on her face.

"Miss me?" was all he said, before his smirk vanished and he turned to the Earth Kingdom man. "Disgraceful," he hissed, advancing. "Dishonourable. Disgusting."

Conjuring a ball of fire in one hand, he pressed one foot forwards onto the man's sternum, pressing down until the nameless man's ribs groaned with the pressure. Spinning slightly and swinging out with one arm, the man was then still for all of a second as Zuko stepped back and then he was out of there like the Devil was on his tail.

There was a beat of silence.

Zuko turned back to Katara and watched silently as she bent over double. He frowned angrily as he saw blood dripping from her collarbone, and then he caught himself as he wondered why he felt angered on her behalf. Thinking about it a little, he asked himself what his uncle would say.

It was the analogy, he realised. The weak versus the strong, the innocent being silenced by those who knew their own power and didn't think before using it.

Also, maybe the sight of a pretty young girl being beaten by a careless, shameless, fully grown man just infuriated him by default.

"Thanks?" she managed to gasp out after some more silence.

"For what, exactly?" He stared over to her injury pointedly.

"He would have done worse in time. He was going to do... he was... well... worse," she bit out, eyes closed as she refused to let the prickling behind her eyes take hold. Broken bones? Bah. She was _not _going to cry in front of her rescuer and now probable captor.

"I didn't do it for you," he said, brow line hardening over his eyes. "If he... got... you, and then I took you, the Avatar would no doubt assume I was the one to hurt you."

Katara was thrown by his logic but was prevented from dwelling on it any further by a fresh stab of her new friend: blinding pain.

"Call it 'self preservation'," he murmured, not really concentrating on the conversation any more as he crouched down beside her.

There was more silence as they stared each other down. Once again, Katara broke it.

"Okay, I know the drill. You're going to gloat for a bit, then I get taken captive, then Aang supposedly rushes to my rescue," she said, with immense effort. "Let's just cut to the chase."

"You're not going to try to run?" he said in surprise.

She stared at him like he was crazy. Slowly she looked down at her arm, then back at him. "Yes," she said irritably, "I'm going to up and go."

"Right."

"I have one request," she ground out, the pain apparently intensifying as she jerked. "Knock me out."

"What?"

She looked at him evenly and he was vaguely surprised at the lack of tears. Didn't girls normally cry when they got hurt?

"How is that an unreasonable request?"

He opened his mouth to respond, and then thought about it. All in all, it made things easier for both of them. It did, however, eliminate all her chances of escape, and he was able to fully accept how bad her injury must be if she was going to give up.

"So... what, I just hit you on the head?"

"How do I know? I dare say you've incapacitated more people than I have, _Prince _Zuko," she ground out, and he rolled his eyes. What were they doing sharing banter anyway? He had things to do, people to abduct, and etc.

She shut her eyes expectantly. "Please."

Zuko watched her again, brow again furrowed. She waited patiently, and his mouth twisted at how strange the moment was. They weren't even trading insults or blows. It was so odd.

"Okay," he shrugged, and brought the knuckles of his fist sharply against the side of her head. She made a little 'oof' sound, nearly a sigh, and fell forwards.

Realising it would damage her shoulder more, he jerked forwards and slung an arm around her middle, caught her uninjured shoulder with the other hand. He held her up gingerly without touching the injury, glancing around automatically as though looking for assistance.

Sighing and steadying her with his hand, he haltingly scooped her up behind the knees. He arranged her in his arms so he could carry her away from his body slightly to avoid jostling her injury.

_Good thing she's so light_, he thought, trudging through the now-deserted streets. The sun had set, leaving behind a relatively dim dusk. He walked carefully, probably looking odd as he adjusted his gait to make his knees act as shock-absorbers; trying to keep his arms and thus her as still as possible.

He didn't know why, but it bothered him to think of her getting hurt even further. She wasn't even really his enemy; just happened to be on the opposite side to him.

Maybe.

Impatiently dismissing the sudden and violent onslaught of thought, mostly to do with how he wasn't sure about his side in this Agni-damned war anymore, he sighted his ship at the docks.

It was purely by coincidence that he'd found the girl in the big town, but he couldn't bring himself to regret the fact that it was her he came across and not the Avatar. He saved her from being - at the least – violently dishonoured.

It was a repulsive image and his mouth turned down as he thought about what would have happened to her if he hadn't come along. He looked down at the girl that he carried oh-so-carefully up the docking plank. She wasn't anything in particular to him – he knew he wasn't lying to himself by thinking that he would have stopped the man no matter who it was that he was tormenting.

Regardless, though, it was a pleasant sensation – to be thoroughly glad of your own existence and good timing. He'd been there, he'd saved her, and that just boded well with him in a way that his father would have quite hated.

Dropping her off in the med bay felt more… "important" than it should have, somehow. More significant. Like it marked the start of something.

It did, he supposed. This was the start of the next stage of trying to snare the Avatar. Leaving the girl with an aging but lively healer, Zuko went on his merry way.

Yeah, right. 'Merry' and 'Zuko' did not mix. Ever. His thoughts continued chasing each other around in his head, mostly centred around the interesting new prisoner he had acquired and how he had gone about doing so.

Before long, he was in bed, on his back and staring at the ceiling – something that was becoming quite a habit when he was deep in thought about something. His mind went through the same basic sequence of thoughts over and over, and occasionally he came back to how he was unsure of his place in the war. He brushed this off – not because he didn't want to think about it, but because it just didn't feel like the right time for that particular bone.

His thoughts, inevitably, returned to the girl. Katara, he knew she was called – he'd heard the little Arrow-head call her that back when he took the scroll and used her necklace against her. He rolled his eyes remembering _that _particular cock-up. Bloody Uncle. Zuko had really likedthat boat.

Deciding he wasn't getting any closer to answers by thinking in circles, and then realising that he didn't know what the question was anyway, he rolled over and closed his eyes.


	6. Chapter 6

**New chapter, featuring slightly doped-up Katara. Hooray for painkillers!**

**Thanks to reviewers. Makes my day over and over again hearing the ding of new mail :D**

"No."

Katara refused to open her eyes.

"Look, girl, I need you to roll over so I can have another look at this!" said the frustrated old man for the millionth time. Katara's mouth pressed into a hard line.

"No."

"Why not? Do you _want _to stay injured forever?" cried the voice that she still couldn't put a face to, having not opened her eyes yet. She was warm, she was comfortable, the injury wasn't twinging, it was early morning so the power of the moon had mostly left her and she wasn't filled with its addictive energy... all in all, things were going great, except for the minor detail of being a prisoner on a Fire Nation ship. Also she might have been drugged.

Always the little things.

"No."

"Stupid girl!" snapped the man, moving to grasp her shoulder and roll her himself, but she clenched her muscles and pushed down on the bed with her torso, refusing to budge. If it had been Zuko pulling, he would have managed it – _or burned me for not cooperating_, she thought wryly – but the old man didn't have the strength in his joints.

"I'll go and get the Prince!" shouted the man irritably.

"Oh, good. Do that."

The man made a final noise of frustration before stomping out in a huff.

Katara's eyes opened slowly, the last vestiges of sleep leaving her mind. She didn't dare move, for fear of upsetting the nasty wound which was set at a mild throb – a significant improvement on its condition last night, or whenever it was she was last awake. It couldn't have been more than a day or two ago, she reasoned, because she'd felt the power of the moon close to its peak during the night and it had been only a few days to the full moon when she'd been attacked.

Ah - the memories resurfaced.

It wasn't a flood of remembrance; it was more like information that she hadn't noticed was missing suddenly popped into her mind. Getting attacked, getting saved, getting attacked again... albeit that last one was by her own request.

Looking around, she only moved her head slightly from side to side so that she could get a look without bumping anything that would rather be left un-bumped. She quickly grasped that she was in an infirmary of some kind; the bare walls were more like the inside of a house than the inside of a ship and there were several unoccupied beds around her. In the far corner there was another taken bed, at which she looked with interest. The man in it wasn't moving, and his back was to her. After a moment, she returned her attention to her surroundings.

There were the classic Fire Nation insignias hanging from tapestries on the wall, and she found it didn't bother her unduly to be stuck in a Fire Nation infirmary. It was better than being stuck in the corner of an alley, dead or close to it.

Most of her reassurance came from an overwhelming feeling of gratitude: however much she would prefer not to be in debt to any of these people, the Prince had surely saved her from severe injury at best. _Though_, she thought wryly, _it's not as if I escaped unscathed anyway_.

She knew – from her memories of the Fire Nation ship that took Aang – that the Fire Nation ships were gunmetal grey on the inside, the bare walls left as metal sheeting without any homey touches. The infirmary, however, was a light gold-tan colour, perhaps to remind injured soldiers of home where the walls looked more like walls and less like… not walls.

_Wouldn't that make them feel worse_? she wondered, puzzling over it. It stood to reason that an injured soldier wouldn't want to be bedridden _and _homesick. What an odd piece of decor.

_You know what else is odd_? Katara asked nobody. _Salt water. It's useless to drink, or bathe properly in, or heal with... who needs salt water anyway? And it's _every_where. Wow._

Her – painkiller induced - musings were cut short by the loud entrance of Prince Zuko. He stared her down with his usual irritability.

"What?" he asked bluntly.

"What?" she replied.

"Don't waste my time! What do you want?"

"Nothing! What are you on about? The old man went to get you, what's that got to do with me?" Katara snapped back, not really angry – her situation was a little too surreal for that, and she felt oddly at ease, like she was floating.

Her tongue, though, was fortunately as sharp as ever.

"What are you playing at? I have important things to do, and you go wasting my time!"

The old man held up his hands defensively, and Katara was surprised at his lack of fear of the firebender. "Prince Zuko, the prisoner would not cooperate and I said that you should come to speak to her! I apologise if you misinterpreted and thought she asked after you," the old one said, just as irritable. "How am I supposed to help her if she will not follow my instructions?"

"If you don't mean something literally, don't say it," said Zuko, annoyed. He turned to Katara. "Do what he says, for Agni's sake," he said shortly, turning to go.

"Wait," she said loudly, ignoring the old man's smug look and staring at Zuko's back.

"What?"

"Why do I need a healer?" she asked. He turned back to her, wearing the expression of someone who had to deal with a very stupid person. Katara's face set stonily, and she tried to ignore the newest weird sensation of having too many hands. _I am never being put on painkillers again_, she noted.

"Why do you think?" he responded testily. "You've got a messed up shoulder, probably broken from where that 'man' hit you. Have you lost your memory or are you just naturally stupid?"

Katara stared, then rolled her eyes after a second. "Idiot," she stated in a matter-of-fact tone. "_I'm_ a healer. I can heal broken bones, infections, sickness, scars... I just need some water."

Zuko, after taking a moment to process this new information, filed it away for further pondering later. Then, realising then what she was asking, he snorted. "You think I'm that stupid? To give you water? You must be crazy."

"I don't mean an ocean," she snapped. "I just need a little bit."

"How am I supposed to know you're not going to try to get away?"

"Are you _thick_?" she asked loudly. The old man was staring at her in amazement at her blatant disrespect. Zuko bristled angrily, but Katara ploughed on anyway. "Oh, yeah, that's right, I lied about being a healer because I'm a _tactical genius_. It'll happen like this: you give me a small bowl of water, and I jump up and bend my way out of the ship, defeating you, that guy, and every guard with this tiny amount of water. All this with a broken shoulder and without having had anything to eat or drink in days.

"Then, I escape into the _middle of the ocean _and bend for hours and hours without any sleep, sustenance, or enough _working limbs_ until I find land. Stranded wherever I happen to be, I go off in search of fresh water or food, assuming I'm not on some deserted island, _still with a broken shoulder_, and just hope my way out of any trouble I run into.

"You know what, yes, you're right, it seems likely that I'm going to get away, doesn't it? After all, a crew of grown men who can firebend are no match for an injured fourteen year old girl wielding a bowl of water!"

Having seemingly gotten all her annoyance out, she smiled sweetly and he stared, at a loss.

If it was anyone else, he probably would have set them on fire, but since she was a bait-prisoner, young, a girl, and helpless, he decided his pride wasn't under any major threat and he was still on top no matter how she spoke to him. He still won, even more so if he didn't react to any goading thrown his way.

Grinning despite himself at this new outlook – and new way to annoy people like her – he spoke. "Give her some water." He turned on his heel and went to leave, but then thought again and turned back to watch. He had been on his way to see his Uncle before, and discuss supplies until he'd been found by the old healer man – whose name was Shun – but now he thought he might watch the girl in action. He'd never seen a true healer at work.

She glared at him irritably, and he smiled inwardly. She was getting more and more annoyed, and he could use a source of amusement.

_Oh, look at him, he's laughing inside_, she thought; quite predictably annoyed. _I'll show him_.

Shun returned bemusedly with a masterfully hewn wooden bowl, which was filled with water. She sat up quickly, smelling her element, then made a loud noise of shock and jerked back down again as her shoulder exploded in pain.

Shun caught her other shoulder before she hit the bed, and looked around quickly for a place to put the water down so he could right her with both hands, but a second later Zuko was with them and grasped her other arm. Together they were able to pull her back towards the wall behind her until she was sitting up – but not without hurting her a bit. It would have been impossible to do it gently.

There was a silence for a moment while the two Fire Nation men watched her bring her breathing back to normal and open her screwed-shut eyes.

_Pretty fireflies_… _oh ow ow ow!_

"Ow."

Zuko smirked and Shun went to hand her the bowl but she shook her head, and then smirked herself. "I don't need the bowl."

Raising a hand, she quirked her brow slightly, searching for the feel of the water. She still felt a bit giddy and hazy, but after a moment she latched on and felt the water respond to her. It relaxed her immensely. Shun inhaled suddenly as she started streaming it towards her with pretty much no effort – he watched with rapt attention to see her bending while she raised her other arm and tentatively pushed at the fabric of her dress.

Carefully ignoring the fact that it was a different dress to the one she'd been wearing when she was caught, she took comfort in the fact that she was in her own undergarments, and she moved the sleeve off her shoulder after making sure all her important bits underneath were hidden by the underclothes.

Pulling the water over her hand and wiggling her fingers with the water like putting on a glove, she breathed strongly, sucking the power down her goog arm and into her hand and placing it over her broken shoulder.

Zuko and Shun both watched in fascination as she water started to glow. Shun, especially, was fascinated, as had never seen any bending other than fire before. This delicate and balanced art was particularly intriguing in comparison.

Katara's face knotted in pain and the men heard the distinct squishing sounds of flesh being pushed around, and she bit her lip as the bone corrected itself. Shun had done a good job while she was unconscious, so it didn't have to move very far, but any correction of injury was as bad as – if not worse than – getting the injury had been in the first place. It meant, however, instant recovery, so it was worth it if you had the guts to grit your teeth and bear it.

Half a dozen long moments later, it was over, and she sent the – now slightly red – water back to the bowl. Zuko leaned forwards, ignorant of his proximity to her, as they all examined the smooth, Water Tribe skin over her previously marred shoulder. Shun poked at it very gently, and then less delicately as he realised it wasn't hurting her.

"Whoa," he and Zuko said together – the latter coughing as though he hadn't spoken – and Katara laughed.

"Can I have a drink now?"

Shun, after one last awed glance at her totally uninjured joint, went off to get her some clean water to drink.

"How do you dothat?" asked Zuko, making sure not to be too emphatic. Katara was surprised to find that he seemed, behind his neutral face, to be genuinely respectful. It may have just been another illusion of the drugs, though – there was currently a small dragon walking around behind him, too, so she wasn't about to trust her judgement at the moment. Shaking all of this off, she responded.

"I'm special," she said, grinning. "Only a select few waterbenders are healers, and only the masters can do it to any extent."

"How did you find out you were a healer?"

"Uh... well... Aang kinda tried firebending, and... maybe... burned me," she explained, cupping the back of her neck awkwardly with one hand as she looked away – was that a cat over there?

Why was there a cat on board? Were cats supposed to glow?

"It hurt. A lot. So I went and put my hands in water and... bam. Glow-y heal-y. It was great! I didn't even know I could do it."

Zuko grabbed one of her hands and examined it for any signs of scarring, not noticing Katara's blush. He let go of her after a moment, seeing only smooth skin, and his own hand crept up to touch his scar.

"Hmm," he said quietly, then turned and walked out without another word, leaving Katara staring after him.


	7. Chapter 7

**This chapter was previously a very long one, but I broadened it and made it more descriptive to explain why Katara doesn't just go off her nut and act reckless like she does in the majority of other capture fics. I'm not sure how well I explained it, and it's not in the same style as the rest of the story (ie it's kind of long and explanatory, without any dialogue). **

**Note is continued at the bottom!**

Sokka even looked under the rocks. "Seriously, Aang, she just isn't here!"

"She has to be here!" he replied stubbornly. "This is the second day we've given her to come back from wherever she disappeared to in case it was something… normal… (read: girly), but nothing! Where else could she be? Appa is still here, all her stuff is still here, and she wouldn't have sneaked away without planning it first and taking what she needed!"

As an afterthought, he added, "And she wouldn't sneak away anyway!"

"I know, Aang, but- actually, maybe you're right… maybe she didn't sneak away," said Sokka seriously, throwing the Avatar a look.

Aang looked back blankly. "What, she just evaporated? Sure."

"No, Airhead, maybe someone got her!"

There was an uncomfortable silence as Aang considered that, and Sokka fiddled absently with his boomerang, trying not to let his defensive brotherly instincts kick in until he'd finished thinking through the situation with a clear head.

"But... Zuko? Why would he take her?" asked Aang. "It makes no sense! He's not after her, he's after me, it just... no, I don't think so."

"He probably thinks you'll go and rescue her from his evil clutches if you figure out he has her," suggested the Water Tribe warrior. Aang's eyes widened slightly, and then narrowed as he scowled.

"He's right," said Aang with about as much venom that he ever spoke with, and looking ready to plough on, and rant a bit about never abandoning people, when the older boy started again.

"Or," continued Sokka with a distressed expression, ignoring him, "maybe something normal happened. Well, more normal than strategic kidnapping. Maybe it was just some guy, or some crime syndicate, or some random mugging-"

"Sokka," interrupted Aang as they switched the roles. Aang became 'calm reason' and Sokka became 'frantic worry'. "This isn't important now. We have to go back to where we last saw her and trace her from there, okay?"

"Whatever," grumbled Sokka, still deep in thought about how he was going to go about hurting whoever was responsible for Katara's disappearance.

They set off back into town.

OOOOOO

Katara had spent several days in the infirmary under the old man's care despite the fact that she was healed – her continued presence in the infirmary was confusing. In that time, she had come to accept her situation. She was a captive of the Fire Nation.

At first, she had been scared and silent – she was surrounded on all sides by metal and enemies, and she didn't know if she was going to be beaten or attacked or tortured for information. Once the drugs had cleared from her system, she had been overtaken with fear and isolation. She prided herself on being a strong girl, usually. The knowledge that you were stranded as a captive, and at the complete mercy of people you had always known to be awful, however, left her – in short – utterly freaked out.

The first time Shun had walked back into the room when Katara was awake and clear-headed, she had sprung from the bed and made to attack him. The whirlwind of thoughts and emotions in her brain from hours of fretting became aggression, and she snarled at him to let her go free.

He did something that completely surprised her. He looked her in the eye, and said, "what makes you think you are a prisoner?"

She froze.

OOOOOO

"And then she said she was going to go look at the waterskins!" cried Aang all of a sudden, snapping his fingers gleefully. "That was it! That was the last time we saw her!"

"Great!" said Sokka. "So where is the waterskin stand?"

They were standing in the middle of the street that they had been in when Katara had vanished, looking around to see where she might have gone. Scouting about for the waterskin stall was their next move.

It didn't take long to locate it. The stall was your typical rear-end-of-a-carriage setup, packed with waterskins. Every colour, size, shape, and material you could think to make a waterskin with was there, packed onto shelves – they were even hanging from the top and sides of the stall.

"Who the heck cares _that much_ about waterskins anyway?" asked Sokka in awe.

"Does it matter?"

"Not at all."

"Excuse me, you! Yeah, hi! I'm looking for a girl you might have seen here the other day," said Aang, running up in his usual forthright manner and addressing the man with the skins. "She was Water Tribe, long brown hair, dark skin, blue eyes, taller than me, shorter than you, really really pretty, wearing a blue-"

"Stop, stop," said the man for the tenth time, finally getting through to Aang, who dutifully shut his airhole. "I saw her for sure. She was here a few days ago, she seemed really keen on the blue one there," said the man, indicating a dark, diamond shaped waterskin. "She ran off pretty fast when Kyo showed up, though," the owner continued, lowering his voice dramatically.

"Kyo?" asked Sokka warily, coming closer.

"Yeah, he caught sight of her good and proper, and I saw, and I told her to run for it," murmured the man, glancing around surreptitiously. "You see, Kyo's a bit of a... well, he's not so good with the younger girls," he said awkwardly. "He... well, anyway, you get my point. The girl took off and Kyo went after her, and it was late, so there was almost nobody around."

"You told her to run for it? Wouldn't she have been safer staying put with you!" accused Aang heatedly, growing agitated as he learned of this 'Kyo' character.

"No!" asserted the man quickly. "Of course not! What am I but an old man armed with a bunch of empty waterskins? I couldn't have done anything; and what would you have had a young girl do if you saw that a criminal was eyeing her with hunger? Pretended nothing was wrong until it was too late? I wouldn't!"

"He's right, Aang," said Sokka, surprising the airbender with his lack of frantic brotherly worry. "Running was the best thing to do."

"But where is she _now_?" moaned Aang, pushing at his eyes with the heels of his hand tiredly. Why wasn't Sokka upset?

"Well," began Sokka's reasoning, "if this Kyo person caught up with her, she must... oh she must be really badly hurt if she couldn't get up and come back! Or she could be dead! SHE CAN'T BE DEAD! QUICKLY, WHICH WAY DID SHE GO?"

Ah. There it was. Aang felt strangely comforted that Sokka was freaking out too, but he himself _did _feel a strong certainty that Katara was alive – and hey, you'd think the Avatar would have a finely-tuned gut instinct for that sort of thing.

That was what he was hoping, anyway.

The man pointed them off towards some smaller side streets – _trust Katara to run off into the deserted alleys_, thought Aang exasperatedly – and handed them a brown, familiar waterskin.

"But this is hers," said Sokka in surprise, which quickly turned to suspicion. "How did you get this?"

"She left it here," he responded in a subdued tone. "She had taken it off to see if the blue one would fit against her comfortably... in fact... take it. Take the blue one to her, if you find her. I would like for her to have it."

He handed the two skins over to Sokka, who put them into his satchel with muttered thanks. Aang turned and performed a respectful bow to the old man, who bowed back and wished them luck as they set off towards and into the vast, tangled network of alleyways.

OOOOOO

As it turned out, she _was _a prisoner, as she had expected. Shun's response ("what makes you think you are a prisoner?") to Katara losing her head was simply the result of many decades of experience in caring for violent patients. _Tell them something that will make them stop in confusion._

It was an effective tactic. She had indeed been confused, and the relative calm that came along with that lasted plenty long enough for him to remind her of how she had come to be there, and assure her that she was not to be harmed. It was by the curious nature of chance that the Fire Prince had come across her; and he had intended to help her, not to hurt her. The fact that she was now possibly being used to maybe help sort of attract the Avatar was simply a side effect.

Very comforting.

Despite this knowledge, once she fully remembered what Zuko had done she calmed down completely. She certainly wasn't _relaxed_, but somehow remembering what had happened and being assured by Shun that it had been coincidental ("seriously, he found you by accident and saved you because that's what he's like. And don't tell him I said that or he'll get mad. That's also what he's like.") made her feel at ease.

It took more than one conversation for her to trust Shun, of course. She saw nobody but him in the first few days of her 'stay' on the ship. He didn't have much to do when the ship was at sea, because people tended not to get injured too often during those times. He was a huge grump but never actually lost his temper, even when she was particularly snappish and unpleasant.

She found herself, initially reluctantly, talking to him. He was like a slightly annoying uncle, and he seemed completely unfased by the fact that she was a Water Tribe girl, affiliated with the Avatar, and being kept against her will. It seemed that nothing really bothered the man. He made for relaxing company, for sure.

Long hours of thinking – and, of course, more than one attempt to open the locked infirmary door – later, Katara came to two rather mature conclusions. Her new convictions were similar in nature to the attitude many people have in life: there's no use crying over spilt milk.

Firstly, what's done is done. The milk had been spilled; and Katara was on the ship whether or not she appreciated it. She couldn't change the past.

Secondly, if something isn't helpful in any way, then there's not much point engaging in it. Crying about the milk won't change anything; nor would Katara help her situation by refusing to co-operate with Shun, or being angry about everything, or living in fear of her situation without known cause. After all, nothing bad had happened to her during her stay.

Adopting a mindset of calm rationality made her feel better. She felt safe – as safe as it was possible to feel on the ship, at least – and after spending some time with the genuine old man, she trusted him when he said that her brother and the Avatar were not there. Things were pretty much as good as they could be, and she knew they were safe. They didn't even know where she was. That, while distressing, meant that they couldn't come after her, and the Prince's convenient save would be just that, and not work as bait.

Speaking of the Prince… as she thought about it, Katara had realised she owed the Prince her life.

How uncomfortable.

**Note continued!**

**The next chapter flows directly on from this one, and I left this one here because that way all the coming events can make another full chapter, instead of this being a ridiculously long one.**

**Again, I'm sorry for the descriptive passages about Katara and her attitude, and Shun, etc. To me it feels wrong… I wanted to explain her thoughts fully because I know people will be unhappy if she acts civil without reasonable explanation. At the same time, I didn't want to write boring filler as my way of explanation: writing story-style events as she comes to trust Shun and accept her situation etc would be the only alternative to my current method. That was just not gonna happen. I'm not going to write something that I would be bored reading, not if I can help it.**

**Please tell me what you thought of that little device – I'd be keen to rewrite it in any way that is more pleasant. It's not even that big of a deal, god, I'm just so **_**insecure **_**about it because it's not how I like to write!**


	8. Chapter 8

"I swear to Agni, Katara, if you don't stay here I will hit you over the head with a bedpan so that you don't have a choice!" cried Shun in exasperation as he walked in. His private quarters were attached to the main infirmary via a small door, and he had walked in to find Katara frozen halfway through an attempt to leave.

"Go for it," she challenged, eyes narrowing. Shun, of course, had no intention of attempting to knock the girl out. Partly because he didn't want to hurt her, and partly because he probably couldn't anyway. Her expression was broadcasting the latter.

"Noted." There was a pause. "I'll get Prince Zuko to hit you over the head with a bedpan."

"Oh _good_, I haven't had a fight in ages."

Shun rolled his eyes and hustled her back over to the bed despite her protests. If she had been in just a slightly worse mood, and if her caretaker hadn't been a harmless, knobbly old man, Katara would have knocked his lights out and taken off.

"I'm _fine_. Why do I need to stay?"

"Well where else are you going to go?"

"Er-"

"See!"

"You didn't let me answer!"

"Okay, what would you have said?" The old man had wit and tongue to match her own, and she was glad that at least she had a verbal challenge, if not a physical. Overpowering him would not have been particularly difficult, but she liked him and there was honestly no point.

"I... could... go and... walk around the deck?"

"If you aren't kept here all the time, we'll have to keep you in the prison holds," he informed her, ignoring her suggestion. "There are definitely no spare individual rooms, and there is no way that you can be housed in the communal areas. There are no other women on the ship, how can we lump you in with thirty men? Most improper."

"... I'll be fine."

"Oh, come now. You don't seriously prefer the idea of staying there to staying here?"

"If it means I get to walk around a little! I haven't walked about, or gotten to bend, or anything, in days!"

"How about I get someone to escort you out onto the deck? You can walk around there, smell the fresh breeze, and all that codswallop... they might even let you bend a little if you are guarded properly," suggested Shun.

"Are you serious?" said Katara dubiously.

"No. Are you stupid? You're not allowed to just wander around like a member of staff!"

"_I think I might hate you_."

"Excellent! That is entirely appropriate."

Katara opened her mouth to retort when the door banged open, revealing a (naturally) rather irritated Prince.

"Shut up!" he yelled in at both of them, effectively silencing their argument. They relaxed somewhat from their stances. "Good! What in Agni's name is the problem?"

"_She _is being ridiculous!" claimed Shun instantly, at the same time as Katara, still lost in the argument, threw her hands into the air and said "_He _is being an idiot!"

Zuko watched them both for a second, then snorted. "You're like an old married couple."

Silence.

"Ew," said Shun and Katara together.

Later, Katara would bury her face in her hands in embarrassment and annoyance at herself when she realised just how… _relaxed_, and un-prisoner-like she had behaved – she still felt the nagging certainty that she should be trying to hate and attack everybody, but her previous convictions remained strong. It wasn't as if she was going to magically escape, all luck and convenience, so there was nothing to gain by being reckless like that. There was also, in fact, a lot to lose. It would be easy for her 'captors' to decide that she was unpleasant, and undeserving of her current good treatment.

The prison hold didn't sound too good. Risking her own health and safety by being rebellious was simply stupid.

"What do you want?" asked Zuko warily, addressing the girl. She was snapped back to the present.

"A bit of fresh air! Somewhere to stretch my legs, and… maybe do some bending," Katara replied without a second's hesitation. "I haven't walked around anywhere or bended for days."

"Fair enough," shrugged Zuko after only brief consideration. He'd want to bend after days of solitude, too, and it wasn't like she was going to get away.

Reasoning that she could escape in the middle of the ocean was like saying a firebender could escape from the middle of a volcano: sure, the waterbender would do better than your average person, but the sea wouldn't treat her any differently. "Come on."

"What, just like that?" said Shun in disbelief as Katara laughed loudly at him. "You're kidding!"

"I am Prince Zuko. I do not kid."

"Listen to the man," said Katara, in a voice that was very close to being sweet, to Shun. "He does not kid."

Zuko rolled his eyes, carefully resisting the smirk that threatened to lift his mouth in response the surprisingly light-hearted relationship between his (accidental) captive and the healer. He thought she'd be more bitter and raging than this, but she seemed so far to be a very 'take it on the chin' person. She wouldn't get out any faster by moping, and unhappiness was bad for you.

Strolling the short distance from the infirmary to the deck, he stepped out first, leading the girl behind him. She seemed hesitant now that she was actually out and about, eyes flicking about with great interest. Fair enough, really, she hadn't seen anything outside of that room for days.

Just saying 'days' didn't make it seem like a long time, but Zuko knew from experience in medical bays that when you were awake and clear-headed, the minutes dragged on for far too long – like it was going out of fashion.

Katara heaved a satisfied sigh as she climbed the steps above deck. The salt gave the wind a tangy smell, and since they were nowhere near any commercial (or otherwise) docks, it wasn't marred by the stench of dead fish. The wind whipped at her hair, which was loose down her back because doing a careful braid and hair-loopies seemed a bit unnecessary given her situation. She breathed in the crisp air with something close to rapture.

After a few minutes of silence where she just sat close to the edge and stared out at the water, Zuko spoke.

"Do you want to do some bending?"

"Yes!" she replied automatically, leaping to her feet and running to the edge. "But don't I need a group of guards or something?"

"Don't flatter yourself. You won't try to escape."

"And why is that?" she asked testily.

"I know where we are – ages and ages from any land. Enjoy your death wish."

"… I will."

The banter felt friendlier than between prisoner and captor. For Katara, holding in her mind the knowledge of what he had done for her was enough to keep her polite.

For Zuko, the important thing had been making sure she knew that he didn't want to hurt her – he had expected her to be upset and terrified when she woke up without the drugs in her, and that didn't sit at all well with him. Having encountered a rather strange attitude so far, he was content to simply go with it. He was having some difficulty deciding what his next move was, and thought that it was best to simply treat her well for the time being.

Katara tentatively raised her arms and moved her wrists to the right. For a moment, nothing happened, and she caught her breath worriedly; but then like a light being switched on she felt her body latch once more onto the push and pull of the tide.

"Still got it," she murmured to herself absently as she streamed sparkling seawater up towards her. She was surprised to hear Zuko laugh, and she turned to search his expression beseechingly. He had a real smile on his face for once – albeit a very small one – and it shocked her to see how nice he looked when he wasn't annoyed, or angry… or murderous….

Their eye contact held momentarily, and then she turned back to the water. Streaming more from the sea, she started to go through some stances on the wide deck, twirling the water over her head and around in circles. She then, somewhat stupidly, cast it into a ball and froze it before suddenly turning it into steam right under the Prince's face.

Zuko jerked back and spluttered for a moment, before conjuring a ball of fire in one hand threateningly.

"Is that a challenge?" he asked dangerously. Why would she do that? He'd been _nothing _but kind to her!

"Yes."

"What?"

"Let's have a spar!" she said enthusiastically.

_Oh, _thought Zuko. _Well then_.

"It's twilight," the girl continued. "Between the moon and the sun. Totally fair situation; you can create fire and I have a supply of water... it's perfect."

She seemed to realise how friendly she must sound, and tried to rein it back. It was hard achieving a balance between politeness and distance – for Katara, flat out nastiness and flat out niceness were really her only settings, and trying to manufacture a halfway point was proving difficult.

Zuko was thrown by her request, but he knew the feeling of pent-up energy when one hadn't had the chance to fight or train for a long time. Katara was still trying to decide if it was possible to undo her previous friendliness without being nasty, which could have repercussions.

Perhaps she could just cut off her tongue and avoid the issue altogether.

"It's the full moon," Zuko responded after considering. "Unfair advantage."

"It's the middle of summer," she countered. "The sun's at its strongest, too."

There was another silence as he considered it again, and he was just moving to go into his fighting stance when he realised that half his crew would be interested and watch – and it seemed likely that he would lose. Straightening up instantly, he shook his head.

"No way."

"Why?"

"Er... the sun is on its way down and the moon is coming up." There! Perfect, brilliant, excellent excuse! "You're at an advantage, and unfortunately since you found a master," they both ignored the memories that that statement brought up, "it's not as easy as it used to be." _Perhaps flattery will distract her._

"You're a man, and so, are bigger and stronger than I am. That evens it out."

"It's a lost cause, Katara," he said stubbornly. "No fight."

He ignored how it tingled to actually call her by her name, especially after she pointed out how he was a _man_; bigger and stronger. He couldn't explain it even to himself, but something quite _male _in him liked being told that, and it awakened an… almost 'protective' instinct in him for some reason. Suddenly the curious stares of his crew annoyed him immensely.

Perhaps 'possessive' described the instinct better.

Walking past her, Zuko leaned on the rail and looked over the ocean. She grumbled and leaned on the rail as well, three metres or so away from him.

"I could just freeze you or something and make you fight," she muttered. He ignored her, but found it funny despite himself.

"So," Zuko said, glancing at her from the corner of his eye. Really, he shouldn't be saying anything. He should just accept her attitude and act appropriate. Be courteous but not particularly friendly, and so on… but, of course, he didn't do that – curiosity is too strong sometimes. "You're not trying to kill me, or insult me, or throw me overboard."

She shrugged, not seeming bothered by the topic.

"I know that Aang and S- well, I mean, I know that the Avatar and my brother are safe. And, I don't feel _un_safe… I'm not being treated badly, and you saved me from being... uh... well, you saved me."

The awoken instinct was pleased with that. He almost rolled his eyes at the reaction.

She turned her eyes to him thoughtfully, and seemed to be casting around for more reasons. "You're a lot better than some of the others I could be caught by," she decided, frowning in distaste. "There was that one guy who caught Aang... um, Zhao."

"Zhao," spat Zuko. "No, you don't want to cross him."

"Why don't you like him?"

"He... we... conflicting interests, you might say..."

"The fight for the Avatar. I see." And so she did, surprising him with her easy acceptance. He might have expected her to be decent about it all if she knew _why _he pursued the Avatar – what he had lost and wanted back – but there was no way she could know that, so her calmness remained a mystery. "Ever fought him?"

For a crazy second, he considered telling her about how _he _was the one who freed 'Aang' when Zhao got involved. The instinct urged him to, gleefully awaiting the praise that surely would follow – but Zuko's senses returned to him as he opened his mouth, and he quickly fell back onto his other major experience with Zhao. Agni-Kai.

"Yes, I have. I won." _How ridiculous that I would almost tell her about _that_. Nobody can know. _He frowned as the memory of the Agni-Kai came back to him, muttering to himself. "I put him in his place. 'Teach me respect,' what rubbish." Zuko's good humour faded perceptibly and his mutterings dropped in volume to silence.

Though he didn't notice, his hand moved. As surely as the sun rises each day and sets each night, his hand drew up to his cheek and touched it lightly.

His fingertips barely brushed the vicious burn mark there, but Katara suddenly realised that it was somehow relevant.

She debated quietly with herself. She didn't think it had been received by Zhao. Somehow, that didn't seem right – his reaction wasn't quite… _right. _She risked making him angry by saying something, but he seemed open and, as she was asserting to herself whenever it seemed too person, this was just information gathering. Not soul-searching.

But naturally, she really was curious. There was obviously more to the guy than you saw from the other side of the fight – an evil person doesn't commit random acts of kindness, and especially doesn't stand by them and continue that kindness later on.

"Your scar," she said quietly, eyes on the moon.

"Ye-e-es," he replied. He spoke extremely quietly, his body and face still but his mind whirling, wondering at her perception. He definitely didn't want to go into this, and he was desperately trying to think of a way to disallow that conversation completely without scaring her, because no matter how courteous he was going to be to the girl, she was not to know about that.

"Well," she said, turning to him, "you got him, didn't you? I bet he wasn't happy. Did he try to get you back for beating him?"

Oh. She didn't go there at all. The thought suddenly struck him that maybe _all _girls were this tactful – he was only used to men, who were more likely to say or ask whatever was on their mind.

"Yes, actually," said Zuko, again after a pause. "Uncle stopped him from burning me when my back was turned, while I walked away."

"Your uncle? I think I know of him," said Katara, surprising Zuko for the _millionth time._ "Is he a mad old guy who loves tea?"

Zuko looked at her, stunned for all of a second, before bursting out laughing and turning away to try to control it. Katara laughed at his laugh, and it took them a while to get back into sanity – if one of them even made the tiniest slip-up and crumpled their mouths, it set them both off again.

Then, of course, they were simultaneously hit by how ridiculous it was for them to act that way.

Katara straightened, coughing, her eyes turning guarded. Zuko responded to that immediately, straightening himself up too and taking a discreet step away. The humour bled out of the scene like water down a drain.

_I shouldn't be doing this_, was Katara's overriding thought. The 'friendliness' was surreal and made very little sense in the world as she had understood it only a few days ago. _This is insane._

The conversation was quite over, but fortunately didn't just default over to prisoner and captor. It didn't make sense to change the way you treated someone without anything _actually _changing – she wasn't going to decide that he was to be avoided and hated just because she had had a… reasonable, let's say… time with him.

Zuko coughed, as she had done, and after a moment of visible hesitation, turned and left.

Iroh watched from a seat near the main ship, carefully dodging away from sight as Zuko hurried away from the deck. "'The mad old guy who loves tea'," he mused quietly to himself, choosing to ignore the awkward and uncouth ending to the teenagers' talk. "I like it."


	9. Chapter 9

**Sorry this one took so long guys, I really struggled with the long time-jump (you'll see quickly what I mean). I know that a few weeks is a long time to jump in the story without seeing the characters' interactions, but the information is there. I like to scatter that kind of monologue, explaining things in a series of short bursts rather than this one massive "this happened and then this happened and then that thing came along and it was like this". I don't like to sit there boring you!**

**I don't know how it turned out (I always seem to say that don't I?) but I hope it's not too painful for anyone. :) do tell me if I made a mistake, because I did this chapter completely out of order and across many editing sessions, so I won't be surprised if there are bunches of unfinished sentences and nonsensical segues.**

**Again, my apologies for the time this took. I started school this week which certainly DID NOT help. Physics is **_**messed up**_**.**

Eventually, Zuko came back. He had realised with some annoyance that he couldn't leave her out on the deck unsupervised – both for her own safety and for security reasons.

The sun was low on the horizon when he returned. She was in pretty much the same spot as he had left her, simply staring out at the water. He had intended to tell her gruffly that dinner was ready, but she turned before he said anything. She looked up at him gently, and politely asked if she would get to come out regularly.

"Sure," he said shortly, still feeling quite awkward and as a result, irritable. She disregarded his mood and smiled.

OOOOOO

Katara had never known time to pass so quickly, but she had been immersed in her strange situation, and somehow around three weeks had passed.

Every morning she would wake up and have breakfast with Shun. Sometimes, if somebody was sick or injured in a way that she could actually help with, she would help Shun to heal them. This had been difficult for Katara to convince herself to do in the beginning, until she fully realised that a few uncomfortably unwell men would not make a difference in the Fire Nation army.

If she allowed these men to remain sick or injured, she wasn't doing 'her side' of the war any favours; she was just allowing the soldiers – _men_, she tried to correct herself – to suffer unnecessarily. She had learned over her time participating in the War that most soldiers in the opposing force were secured in the army by conscription. The mere thought of their families back at home set Katara bustling to have them well again.

Over the short weeks, she accidentally earned herself a reputation. She hadn't even considered how her actions would seem to the soldiers: they, however, saw a prisoner of war willingly assisting her enemies simply because she inexplicably wanted to.

After lunch most days, she was allowed to spend her time on the deck. Zuko was often nearby and checked up on her – he trained on the rear deck while she was allowed to spend her time on the front deck, meaning she didn't see him during his exercises.

His version of 'checking up on her' was walking over and asking her in a very straight-forward manner if she was still in an acceptably "good condition". Her affirmative response sent him promptly in the other direction to attend to other Princely duties.

In the late evenings, Katara was usually joined by the Prince, who liked to spend his time outside as much as she did. It was a long time before they spoke properly again, and it was only because he was burned (and quite irate about it), and she insisted upon healing him. After much nagging and his eventual, grudging acceptance, she did so.

From that night on, they talked.

OOOOOO

Katara would probably have been very bored during these few weeks, but they were dotted with some very Significant Events, including her first opportunity for escape (which was taken half-heartedly at best and failed promptly, mainly because she had no idea where it was that they were docked); and properly meeting Iroh (who was a suitably ridiculous General but delightful person).

One event, though, certainly overshadowed all the others and served to change the game. At the end of the first week, Zuko's ship found what it had been hanging around for. Incidentally, said thing soon became very interested in the ship in return after getting a good, long look at the front deck.

Aang and Sokka knew where she was now.

OOOOOO

Zuko and Katara were out on the deck, in a very similar situation to the one last recorded, with a beautifully clear full moon rising in the distance. It had been just about a full moon when she was first brought onto the ship, and she realised just how long it had been since she had properly seen her brother and Aang.

Too long.

She decided it was time to ask.

"What happened?"

Zuko looked at her oddly as she said it, and she continued, feeling like she was standing next to her own body which was asking things that shouldn't be asked. Because it was stupid.

"What changed? You're not who you used to be. You know? Like… like with the pirates and… stuff."

Zuko took less time than she expected to respond to her poorly phrased question. He shrugged. "It's a long story. Family, _betrayal_, questioning my loyalties. Boring stuff. I almost cut off my ponytail. I'm just not as _uptight_ about… well, all of this, as I used to be." He said the last part quite defensively.

And then he almost vomited out his brain as he realised what he'd thoughtlessly blurted. _Agni, why do I constantly tell her things so easily, as though she's uncle? Do _all _girls have magical powers like this? I don't even understand._

Katara quickly sifted through what he said, dismissing the heavier-sounding stuff for later thought and concentrating instead on what could continue the conversation. She had consistently been telling herself that any and all conversation-making between the two of them was simply reconnaissance work, and keeping herself in the good books.

Never mind that she was almost a little bit coming to sort-of like the personshe found underneath all the armour and fire. Maybe even more than that.

"You almost what?"

"I almost cut off my ponytail." She still seemed confused, and he realised why. "Oh – cutting off your royal style," he began, sounding distinctly mocking of the concept, "symbolises that you're... you've changed sides. Sort of. It's like displaying that you're no longer loyal."

"Oh," said Katara, mulling that over while Zuko turned and stared stonily out at the waves, berating himself for telling her that and 'wondering' (if you could put it so mildly) why he was telling some Water girl his life story. Did he really just imply that he was considering becoming a _traitor _to his country?

Never mind that his father had banished him and didn't look to be inviting him back anytime soon. She didn't know that, and he wasn't about to explain the whole thing.

"It's also nice to have someone to talk to that isn't an old man; or a middle aged man who is scared of you," he offered. Katara didn't take the bait of new conversation and instead returned to the 'loyalty' thing as Zuko grudgingly thought she would.

"So, you nearly changed sides?" she said, deciding the head-on approach would be best.

"Ye-e-es..." he said hesitantly. "But – uh, no."

"Don't lie. So why were you going to?"

_Don't tell her_, thought Zuko even as he opened his mouth to respond. _Oh you idiot, she's _not here to be your friend_, what the hell are you doing?_

"I'm on this… this quest to catch the Avatar to get my honour back. It's a long story, it doesn't matter, but the lack of honour led to run-ins with … people... it doesn't matter, it's a really long story." Explaining his sister, and her lies, and his crushed reaction when she had told him he was going home… it wasn't worth re-living it.

_And_, he corrected himself for the millionth meaningless time, _she's not here to be my friend_. He almost tripped over the thought of 'friend'. He always did. However, he couldn't lie to himself – he had asserted the fact that she was an enemy so many times to himself that it had all but lost meaning. He was a little concerned over the fact that he thought he might actually like this girl. Just as a person – she wasn't a savage and as they had continued their kinda stand-offish relationship, he found himself forgetting all his 'reasons' for treating her in that certain considerate way, and was now simply treating her that way naturally.

Unbeknownst to him, Katara had experienced the same phenomenon.

"We have time…."

"I know," he said absently, eyes locked on the rising moon. Was it too much to ask just to never think about his family again? The hurt he was put through at their hands was enough to make him want to stay away forever. "The moon is full," he said, casting around rather depressedly for a new topic. "Aren't you really powerful now?" _Genius, Zuko. You are simply a classic._

"Yes," she scoffed, "and it's taking a lot of effort not to jump overboard and bend for the next twelve hours. However, I'm too curious and outnumbered to do so. Tell me about… your honour and everything... please?"

_Risky move_, she thought, cringing internally as finished speaking.

She still had no real idea whether or not he was just being courteous, or if their conversations were actually legitimate. Asking him to reveal what were almost certainly militarily-relevant details was definitely a gamble.

He turned to look at her, finding himself noting vaguely how her eyes were an incredibly blue blue, and hesitated. _If you start, you won't stop_, he warned himself. _Look out, do you really want to trust this W-_

"It started when I was younger... when I got my scar," started Zuko, cutting off the voice in his head and ignoring the shocked look on his face. He probably had a look of shock on his face too as he numbly heard the words spill out of his treacherous mouth. "Uncle took me into my father's meeting at my continuous request..."

Once he started, he didn't stop, as his brain had warned him. Katara listened to the whole story, face contorting in anger at a few points, but she held her tongue.

By the time Zuko had finished, he had his head bowed and was speaking very quietly. Katara had sidled closer to hear him and they were standing side by side. She had her head down too, and was feeling furious and sad on his behalf once she heard the story.

"You know what?" she said after a long time of silence. He looked up at her as she glanced around to see if anyone was watching.

"What?" he said softly. She turned back to him.

"I think you would have turned good ages ago if somebody had bothered to just give you a hug or something."

She almost did it.

She was _that close_ to just throwing her arms around him but, with a seriously immense effort, she separated herself from the heartbreaking story she had just heard and tried to keep in mind what they were to each other – _not _people who hugged. He'd probably have set her on fire or something.

Her quiet statement hung between them quite awkwardly. Zuko was standing there, his face burning with something he couldn't identify after spilling so much to someone he'd known a month (and under questionable circumstances, too). Somehow, his… embarrassment?... seemed to stem only from the fact that he had bared a lot of himself to her, and not that it was completely inappropriate stuff to be telling someone like her. The latter fact didn't even enter his mind once he had it all out.

He was also experiencing the very uncomfortable sensation of being unsure of how exactly you usually stood when talking to someone – where do all the limbs normally go? Nowhere felt right. He was acting like a bumbling teenager with no clue how to behave around women.

Well, he _was _that, but he was acting like one who wasn't a prince, and couldn't hide behind it.

When she had said the hug thing, he had frozen in what could only be described as fear, and waited with bated breath to see what she was going to do. He didn't know if he would return it or throw her overboard if she tried to hug him.

He didn't really know anything to be honest. He had _no idea_ what was going on.

Just as he got to the end of this high-speed thought process, Katara jerked her head to the side and gasped, moving back. Zuko's immediate and bitter reaction was to think she was recoiling from him, like everybody seemed to do, but quickly he realised that she'd spun around and was searching the waves ahead with great concentration.

"What?" he asked slowly, assessing her expression.

"We have to dock," she whispered, eyes still searching.

"What?" he said, puzzled. "What's wrong?"

"There's a storm!" she said urgently. "_Huge_. We're going to sail straight into it unless we outrun it to the right and dock somewhere!" Her eyes had found their mark and she was staring out at about 10-oclock from where they were standing.

"A storm? Are you crazy?" he followed her eyes, not seeing anything different there than anywhere else. "It's a perfect night! It's not even windy."

"Trust me, Zuko, it's coming, and fast," she said, staring him down. "You're not about to dispute the oceanic opinion of a master Waterbender during the full moon, are you?"

"I'd be happy to," he said grumpily. "Are you sure?"

"Right then," she said, turning and making her way towards the rear deck where Iroh had fallen asleep onto his board game. She reached him and stood there uncertainly, not sure how she should go about waking him. She was just tentatively reaching for his shoulder when she heard Zuko's warning.

"Be careful," he reproached, walking up behind her. "If you surprise a Firebender when they're asleep they're liable to crisp you by accident." She responded by standing up and gesturing to his uncle.

"You do it then. I like being intact."

He rolled his eyes and shook his uncle's shoulder, one hand up carefully. "Uncle," he murmured. "Wake up, it's important!"

"Hurhh... wha- what?" he sat up woozily, rubbing at his eyes with the heels of his hands. "What is the problem?"

"There's a massive storm coming," said Zuko. "Or, at least, Katara thinks so."

"You felt it on the tide?" asked Iroh, attentive now if not fully awake. "And you can taste it?"

"... yes." How did he know that she could taste it? _She_ didn't even know that, only realising now that the air was practically dripping with the hot, bitter odour of the storm.

"Which direction do we need to avoid?"

"We have to go to our right, to the nearest land," replied Katara. Zuko was too busy rolling his eyes at his uncle's easy acceptance of her words to contribute to the conversation, or to chastise her for saying 'right' instead of something appropriately nautical.

Iroh frowned. "There's nothing out there for many miles."

"What? Why are we so far from the coast?"

"The coast is that way," spoke up Zuko quietly, pointing in the direction that the storm was coming from.

"Oh," said Katara, then realised what that meant. "Oh... that storm is huge, there must be casualties," she said, deathly quiet. She looked up again, frowning in thought. "We have an hour. Less."

"We must go, now," said Iroh urgently, getting up and hastening upstairs as fast as his old joints would let him. They followed as he navigated the corridors with the ease of someone who had done so a hundred times, and they soon emerged into the control area. There was only one man there at that time of night; he was sitting at the steering console, boredly watching the moon.

"Helmsman," said Zuko loudly, and the man hastened to jump to attention, almost tripping over his own feet. Zuko noticed with an annoyance he was now used to that the man's eyes kept flicking interestedly to Katara, and he resisted the urge to throw some fire at the man to secure his attention. "There's a storm coming in from the north-west; we have to change course to the nearest land out to the east."

"Storm?" asked the man in surprise. "But there's nothing out there. Sir."

"Oh, there is," said Katara. She waited patiently for a moment, and then said matter-of-factly, "You should probably hurry up."

The man bristled at being told what to do by a prisoner, but Iroh spoke up. "Come on! Change course, we must get out of its path."

The man resigned his pride and turned to the wheel, manoeuvring it slowly to re-adjust the ship. "Storm, sure," grumbled the man under his breath. He continued in this fashion with mutterings of 'not going to get a wink of sleep tonight,' and 'imaginary rainclouds.'

Zuko smirked, opting to react passively to the man's obvious irritation at orders, and walked from the room before he started laughing out loud. His uncle and Katara followed, and they moved to the rear decks to look out in the (new) direction of the supposed storm. "I really hope you're right," he called over his shoulder at the Waterbender, "because this will be a very annoying detour if you aren't." The thought that it could be sabotage never occurred to him, which was fortunate considering it would have made the decision to listen to her very difficult.

"I am," she said confidently, and he just shrugged again. As the word 'friend' popped into his mind, he decided, _again_, that he would think about the developments some other time.

Iroh came to lean next to Katara, who was leaning next to Zuko. They all stood in companionable silence, watching the sea in the direction of the 'storm'. Zuko was thinking about how Katara was the most unlikely friend he could have ever thought of, and about how surprised he was that she wasn't being horrible to him. Katara was thinking about how odd it was that she was a prisoner on an enemy ship but didn't feel like she was unwelcome, somehow. Iroh was thinking about how Zuko and Katara were really good for each other and how much he hoped they'd continue to get along.

After a moment, Katara spoke. "I told you guys. There it is."

"There what is?" said Zuko, looking up at where she was pointing. "I still don't- whoa. _Whoa_. Look at that! How fast is that coming?"

"Very fast," said Iroh, staring at it in horror.

"_Thanks, _Uncle."

The hazy black scratch on the horizon was growing larger every second. They could see the sea pretty well since it was a full moon and the stars were all twinkling merrily, but the storm was changing that. It could be chillingly identified by the gradual blotting-out of the stars on the horizon.

The trio watched it for a little longer. "It's even bigger than it feels," breathed Katara, fidgety and crackling with energy. "Ohh, the urge to jump out and get away is overwhelming..."

"Don't," advised Iroh.

Apparently the helmsman had noticed the storm through the back window of his room, because the ship started to speed up dramatically. This didn't make the approach of the storm any less noticeable, however. The stars were being eliminated as the ceaseless storm grew closer.

"Can't you guys feel that?" broke in Katara after some time, growing more and more agitated. "The tides are practically screaming at me! Can't you taste it? Ugh. It's so strong," she said with distaste. "I can't believe you aren't able to tell!"

"The gifts of a Waterbender," said Iroh graciously.

"Gifts, my ass," muttered Katara, shocking the other two with her language. "It makes me want to freeze the entire ocean. Damn full moon, damn storm – _I'll take you on, just you and me_!"

"Don't," advised Zuko.


	10. Chapter 10

**I'm going to, as my way of helping to flesh out the timeline, reply to Kelly Miley's review here.**

**I **_**know **_**that their actions towards each other are confusing and probably don't seem right, I really do! But, there are some crucial things to remember. Firstly, you have to read every sentence! Sometimes a vital explanation will be casually contained in a small amount of words – as I've explained before, I don't do the whole "write and write and write about why they're doing and thinking this stuff". I scatter information to avoid boredom. **

**Secondly, this is NOT set in the canon series timeline. As far as my writing goes, the exact timeline isn't especially important. I know the fact that there is no set timeline will grate unpleasantly with some of you, but it's really not the point to this. To help as much as I can, I'll explain events as far as they are relevant or 'set' to me.**

**This is set after Katara mastered water in the Northern tribes, but Zuko still has a crew and a ship (no Zhao debacle, he doesn't feature in this). Azula has come to Zuko and claimed that Ozai wants him home etc so forth, and then it turned out to be a lie. The Swamp debacle has happened, and Aang figured out from that and from what Bumi said ("your teacher will be someone who waits and listens") that the blind Earth Kingdom girl from his vision is the one he needs to find – Zuko, as I explained in a previous chapter, assumes that they are simply city-hopping because he's learning earthbending from lots of different teachers in order to not stay in one place for too long. Really, they are searching for this girl. And, **_**importantly,**_** Zuko has been fretfully debating his position in the war and his loyalties to his family for quite some time now. He **_**did not **_**take Katara for the purposes of bait, but that's 'technically' the reason she's still here, as he doesn't know what he's doing with himself or with regards to the Avatar. He's confused (and also much more self-aware than in the series!). He took her to be taken care of, and with the thinking that, depending on what he ended up deciding to do, she could be useful to him. As he thought it through, though, he found no resolution and didn't find himself particularly wanting to carry out his quest anymore.**

**I think the chronological order of the last chapter was a little confusing: each little section happened at a different time, and you had to just sort of piece it together really. Basically, they docked once during the three weeks which was her flimsy opportunity to escape, which obviously wasn't successful; and Aang and Sokka spotted her by coincidence after about a week from her boarding. The ship had been sailing up and down the coast of the Earth Kingdom without much point or purpose (to the frustration of the crew I'm sure) before Zuko stumbled upon Katara, and that was what they continued to do once she was on board…**

**If you don't like how Zuko and Katara got to the point that they're at now (or you don't like how you missed three weeks worth of it building up to that) then, again, I'm sorry, but you'll have to just read on knowing that they are at that sort of awkward, surprised-that-they-are-liking-each-other-as-people-but-liking-each-other-anyway stage. Remember that three weeks is plenty!**

**My apologies if I missed anything, or anything is still unclear, it's hard to keep track of what confuses people and why, when the story makes sense in my head! I'm sure any writers here know that feeling. Anyway, I'll try to clear up any other questions that you guys have, just ask; but it's about time I got on with the chapter, even though it is probably messy! We don't see much of Aang and Sokka in these few chapters I know, but all these events are in a short space of time. Read on!**

"This really isn't working," said Katara, frowning out to sea. Zuko's temper was shortening by the minute, so she didn't say anything else when he started kicking fire across the deck in frustration.

"We are not moving fast enough, you are correct," said Iroh, joining her at the edge.

"Let's just go and have something to eat," said Zuko loudly from behind them, cutting them off as they started to discuss what would happen if the storm reached them. "I'm starving. It'll be too late soon, if not already." Katara and Iroh pushed back off the rail and followed him inside.

Zuko had been presented with a platter of roasted meats and Fire Nation vegetables as soon as he sat down, and Iroh had been given some hearty duck stew in a large bowl.

"It's lucky dinner was late tonight," commented Zuko boredly. "Everyone's down here still and there's food left."

"Why does he get more than you?" asked Katara, looking at Iroh's solitary bowl and frowning as Zuko started picking absently at his food. "_He_ doesn't even want it."

Iroh shrugged with a mouthful of duck. Swallowing with some difficulty, he spoke. "This is all I want. And it is delicious! And-... my dear, you must go and get some food," he finished sternly, forgetting whatever else he was going to say as he realised she hadn't been given any. Rather awkwardly, he continued. "You are still… classification… not exactly "guest"… must get…."

"That's okay, normally I have to get it myself anyway, and the great outdoors don't cook it for me, either," she said, a little unsuredly. "Uh, where?"

Iroh, mouth once again full of food, pointed behind her at a long bench. Zuko was staring at his plate and said nothing.

She set off quickly, trying not to look or feel out of place though it was blindingly obvious that she was. She ignored her fearful instincts as she wove through the crowds of people, trying very hard not to elbow anyone for fear of being set alight by an annoyed soldier. Slipping through the final wall of bodies, she saw the long bench right in front of her, and she moved quietly among the men already there to get some food.

There were a few varieties of plate to choose from. There were plates of soy fish and rice, and some other meats with rice. There was also a large pot of soup next to a stack of bowls.

Most of the dishes were essentially the same, but she spied the one remaining plate of sushi and judging from the little shafts of steam coming from the fillings; it was freshly cooked meat inside.

Angling straight for it, she skirted soldiers and picked it up with an air of someone who had found money on the ground. Turning to return to her table, she came face to chest armour to a soldier. Hastily murmuring an apology, she tried to move around him, but he grabbed her shoulder.

Glaring up at him automatically, she caught herself and tried to assemble a more apologetic expression, remembering that she was a prisoner in a room full of soldiers and it would do her well to act subservient, no matter how much it grated at her personality to do so.

"That's mine," he said bluntly, indicating the plate of food she was still holding. She looked at it, then back up at him. Thinking of nothing to say that wasn't rude, she settled for clarification. Instead of asking 'was it made specifically for you' or saying 'I got there first, rack off', she made it simple.

"Why?"

He glared at her. "What do you mean, why? I want it. It's mine."

"I got to it first!" _Oh gods you did not just say that._

Despite how stupid she felt for saying that, she could feel in her gut that if this man didn't stop hassling her, she was going to flip. It was okay to be quiet and docile, but it was something else entirely to let someone It was all a bit too much – full moon, being a prisoner, storm coming, and now she couldn't even eat some sushi in peace.

"Hand it over, wench," he snapped, ignoring her comment and making an unsuccessful grab for it, tightening his grip on her shoulder.

"_Wench_?" she asked, looking him straight in the eye. "What are you, a bully or a pirate?"

"I'm a grown man. And what are you? A little girl," he said, missing her insulting sarcasm and pushing his face close to hers. "Don't make a scene, prisoner. I want the food, I will have the food, and if you keep at this then maybe I'll send for you during the night and see how rude you-"

His tirade was cut off by a large amount of soup to the face. Katara stood in her fighting stance with a shoulder throbbing and some lovely-smelling soup circling her obediently. Normally she would have struggled to control something that was only partly water, but the full moon lent her lots of strength.

There was silence in the entire room for about half a second – long enough for her to realise she was screwed. She breathed a curse, dropping her hands as she realised what a fool she was, while the man let out a roar and lunged at her.

She was still frozen in indecision between bracing herself for the hit, or fighting back despite the idiocy of doing so; and the result of this was that she just stood there distractedly while he grabbed her by the front of her clothes and lifted her up off the ground.

Snapping back to attention at the jerking movement, she lifted the soup up again and made to pound him with it as he cast a furious fire in his other hand, when she was suddenly on the ground again.

Zuko stood between them, looking acceptably angry, with a tightly restraining hand on Katara's sore shoulder and a threatening one in the offending soldier's face.

There was another round of silence in the room as everyone watched the situation. Zuko lit a small fire in his hand and held his hand still, the flame up in the soldier's face. The man appeared frozen in place as he watched it, and suddenly Zuko closed his hand.

"Any questions?"

"No sir," responded the soldier instantly, before glancing in Katara's direction and walking out stonily. Zuko watched him, then cast the room a dismissive look and walked back to their table, Katara in tow.

Iroh was watching from a half sitting, half standing position, apparently having been poised to jump in if things got out of hand. Seeing them returning and hearing the room's conversation start nervously up again; he sat down and happily tucked back into his food.

"_Zuko_," said Katara for the tenth time since the 'incident', trying to get his attention. He either didn't hear or chose to ignore her, as they reached their table and he pushed her down firmly before taking a seat.

"I left the sushi back there."

"Have this," he said curtly, pushing his plate over. "I don't want it."

"No, you said you were hungry."

"I'm not."

Iroh and Katara both adopted the same expression. "Eat," she said. "You have to eat."

"I don't care if you're not hungry," Iroh continued for her, "but you must eat."

Glancing at them both, he rolled his eyes and picked up a knife. Satisfied, Iroh turned away, but Zuko drew a line.

Not metaphorically, literally – he drew a line in the food. Using his knife, he split the food down the middle of the plate and indicated for Katara to start eating. "You have to eat too," he said blankly.

"The _royal food_?" she gasped sarcastically, her expression still severe. "Only if you do." He frowned and opened his mouth to say something else which was the perfect opening for her to half-toss, half-bend a piece of meat into his mouth.

He jerked back, but his years of etiquette training kicked in and he quashed the automatic instinct to spit it out. Instead, he stared her down and started chewing slowly. _I wonder if Uncle would be angry if I killed her._

"Ah, sweet success," said Iroh in satisfaction.

Minutes later, they were interrupted by the ship rolling slightly, which jerked the inhabitants of the room into stopping nervously. For the third time that night, the whole place was silent.

A loud groan split the air before the ship seemed to buck up – the floor simply fell away on one side and rose up, up, up on the other. The whole world tipped over.

Falling down along the bench she was sitting on, Katara went straight into Zuko's chest and they both flew through the air for what felt like far too long before they struck the wall. The various shouts all over the room began cutting off as other things – tables, chairs, and other people – joined the fray.

The entire contents of the room that weren't secured to the floor – which in their small ship was essentially everything, given that tables and benches often needed to be moved – simply fell away down towards the walls.

It was lucky that Katara reacted before Zuko, because his totally-automatic move would have been to lock his arms around her, thus pinning her arms to her sides. She didn't react strategically, however, it was just that her knee-jerk reaction was faster than his.

Katara threw her arms up in front of her and, with a shout, screwed her eyes shut in preparation for the impact. She heard the tables and chairs striking the walls around her, but nothing else.

No impact came. The smashing of furniture echoed all around her, and she thanked the gods that none of it had hit her.

Realising that there were no screams or shouts anymore, she opened her eyes again. Zuko, behind her, bit back a gasp at the state of the room.

Hovering. Everybody was frozen as they had been when Katara had thrown her arms up. It was one of those moments that seems to stretch out and occupy ten times the seconds that it actually does.

Every single person in the room was just hanging in the air, bodies and faces frozen however they were when Katara reacted. There was one soldier halfway through tripping over right in front of her, face contorted and body braced to hit the wall. Many men in the room were halfway through making a grab for something or someone to hold them up, while many more were on or near the ground and rolling.

They were all just frozen.

Suddenly, the moment ended and the ship rolled back to normal, throwing Katara forwards and back onto her feet instead of against the wall. Her arms dropped, releasing everyone in the room as Zuko crashed into her back and they both fell to the floor.

Standing up shakily, Zuko pulled her up, looking at her searchingly. Iroh got up from beside them, also staring at Katara. In fact, everyone in the room was staring at her.

"_You _did that?" Zuko asked slowly. She stared at him, then at the room at large, then back at him again.

"Yes... I guess."

"What do you mean you _guess_? You did that! How did you do that?" he demanded, still holding her wrists where he'd pulled her up. She shrugged awkwardly, looking at the room again.

"It's the full moon," she said evasively.

"And?" Zuko wasn't letting her go.

"I didn't mean to," she muttered. "It did it by itself."

"_How_?" asked Iroh, fascinated that there was a form of waterbending he didn't know of. "People are mostly water... you were bending?"

"Well…" she said, looking down. "I can... it's bloodbending... but I never wanted to be able to. It was Hama who made me do it in the first place – and it was because of the Fire Nation anyway." She pressed her lips together, having messed up that explanation.

"Who's Hama?" Zuko asked, ignoring the mention of the Fire Nation.

Sighing, she resigned to the fact that she would have to explain herself – it wasn't a choice, and she realised how suspicious of her it would make everyone if she didn't talk. The soldiers would start thinking she was out to get them simply because she had the ability to.

"It only works during the full moon," she began softly. She told them briefly about a Water Tribe prisoner named Hama who had learned it to escape, and how the experience had made her crazy; leading her to force Katara to use the art to save her friends.

"I've never used it again before now, and I didn't mean to," she finished.

"I remember it," one soldier spoke up timidly. "She was the only one ever to escape..."

"Good on her, I would say, if she had used different means," said Katara mildly.

"As fascinating as this is," interrupted Iroh (who did look like he meant it at least), "pressing matters are waiting to be attended to. In case all of you forgot, the storm is still raging and is getting worse – we will roll again soon!"

Snapping back to attention, almost all the soldiers ran out and headed for either the deck or control room.

Zuko went to move, then realised his hands were still clasped around her wrists, and he jerked them back quickly.

"Oh sorry-"

"No that's fine-"

"-didn't realise-" he continued quickly.

"-just distracted, it's ok-" she replied just as quickly.

"-doesn't matter anyway, you're just a prisoner-" he fired off without thinking.

"-doesn't matter anyway, you're just a _Fire Nation prince_," she retorted.

"Yeah, it's not like we could ever be _friiieeends_ or anything," he replied in kind, stretching out the word.

"Well it's not like I _want_ to be _friends_," she said scathingly back.

"Well it's not like I _want _you to want to be _friends_," he snapped, and as Katara started to reply, Iroh grabbed both their shoulders.

"Well it's not like there's a deadly storm raging outside," the old man said loudly to both of them. "Oh, wait! Yes it is! So _let's go_!"

Giving each other one last annoyed look, the two turned and followed him up to the deck.


	11. Chapter 11

**This is a short little **_**stupid**_** chapter for you guys, just to keep me in the swing of things. School is certainly keeping me super-busy. This is mostly filler and I found it a bit of a laugh to write.**

**Constructive criticism is good, but plain criticism… not so much :p I'm definitely keen to hear all of your comments! Just, try to back up what you say so I know what you mean - it doesn't help me if you make a comment about something you disliked, but don't explain it.**

**Also, the cause of some recurring issues for people (as far as I can see the cause to be, anyway) is not something that will change. Some people fundamentally won't like that I write light-heartedly, and that I don't like to focus a great deal of my efforts on the timeline etc; stuff like that. That is **_**totally fine**_**, and I don't have a problem with people not having the taste for how I write, but there's not much point reading my story if you don't like my style! Fair enough if it's just small things that annoy you here and there, and again I'd like to reinforce that I am **_**not **_**saying "how dare you guys criticise me" but if you are reading this and thinking all the time about how irritating you find the characters' portrayals and stuff, then you don't have to keep reading! I followed a story for months recently until it went in a direction that I just hated, and then I parted ways with it. It's cool, really – I won't hold it against you.**

**To everyone who is enjoying this – to avoid ignoring you – thanks so much! **

**Last but not least, I love reviews (for the third time, **_**yes**_**, even the negative ones). So, thanks to all who share with me that way, rather than private messaging. I'm not saying I count my reviews, but I totally count my reviews.**

"Oh Gods," said Katara as they made it to the top of the stairs.

"Change of plans," yelled Iroh through the howling wind and rain. "We're going back below deck!"

As though in response, the boat tipped again and Katara was thrown bodily towards the open deck. Iroh jumped down a step and ducked to avoid her, but Zuko fell over sideways too which meant that instead of crashing into him, Katara went flying past and skidded rapidly down the drenched wood, heading straight for the edge.

"Katara!" shouted Iroh, as her thin body became her disadvantage. The deck's railing had small bars at intervals up and down it, and the gap between the first bar and the deck _was _tiny – unfortunately, she was tinier.

Katara of the Water Tribe went straight under it, falling off with a strangled cry and plummeting down into the raging seas below.

Zuko muttered something savagely and threw himself in the same direction.

As he reached the edge and pulled himself up with the rail, he leaned over and shouted for her. He could see a plate of ice far below in the water and his brow furrowed as he tried to figure out what that meant, but then as it got closer he realised Katara was standing on a thick piece of ice and growing a wave to carry her back to the surface.

"Hurry up!" shouted Iroh from his place gripping the stairwell, seeing that Zuko had stopped and assuming Katara was alright. "We need to be _not here_!"

"We're coming!" shouted Zuko back, wiping irritably at his face time and time again as the rain continued to pour. The waves were getting bigger and more frequent, forcing him to cling tightly to the rail at all times.

Katara's lithe form leaped over the edge a moment later, her body narrowly missing him as she did a neatly tucked barrel roll on the deck, ending up half crouched and on her feet. Zuko didn't even have time to admire the body showing under the clinging, soaking clothes before she grabbed his arm and yanked him forcefully towards the stairs.

Iroh was faithfully waiting for them, bracing himself against the stairwell as they approached. "Come on, come on, hurry," he continuously muttered to himself even as they raced towards him.

True to form, the storm lurched the ship at the very second they reached the stairwell. They were still running, so the floor being wrenched away caused them to go flying, and they both had to somersault in the air to avoid knocking Iroh's head off.

"Not AGAIN," roared Zuko furiously as both their bodies struck the deck, hard. Katara was hit the hardest and all her breath whooshed out of her, leaving her gasping as the vessel tilted further, sending them both away again.

Zuko reached out and grabbed onto her, holding her whole body against his own as they both went towards the side of the Agni-damned deck. He figured since his body wouldn't go through the rail, she wouldn't either, but she had another idea. Reaching out slowly, still out of breath, she placed her open palm against the deck.

They stopped sliding.

Zuko was speechless for a moment – how could one of her hands hold them in place as the boat tipped further and further? He was now actually holding on to her to prevent himself falling – the boat was almost a cliff face.

Then he understood, as the freezing cold ice reached him, too. She had frozen them both to the sopping wet deck, and Iroh watched in morbid fascination (a little bit sideways) as the ice crystals spread further and further, holding them in place thickly in the centre.

Zuko noticed it steaming around him, and quickly lowered his body temperature suitably.

The moment stretched out as he became aware of their proximity, but luckily it was way too cold for him to... _react accordingly_. Thanking his lucky stars – currently obscured by the raging storm – he waited for the moment to pass.

Pass it did. Both of them melted the ice and instead of getting up, Katara grabbed back onto him when he let go and sent them both towards the stairwell with a strong water push. Slipping over the rim of the hatch and once again almost beheading Iroh, they both landed hard on their feet.

Unfortunately, they both landed hard on their feet in water, and their feet promptly slid out from under them with their momentum, throwing them – not down the deck this time, but – backwards and straight into the wall.

Zuko hit his head first, and fell down onto the stairs, severely disoriented. Katara hit her head next, falling on top of him with a thud. Zuko sat up slightly, groaning; expecting her to roll straight off him and stand up because she had hit her head far less hard than he had, but he realised after a second that she was draped over him and out like a light.

He froze. He didn't ask himself any questions or think any thoughts, nothing about 'now what?' or 'I'd better pick her up' or 'oh, girls get knocked out really easily. Wow'. He just froze, and stared and froze and maybe stared a bit on the side.

Iroh stepped in after a moment and put his hands under her arms, stifling laughter at his nephew and hoisting her up over his shoulder. Zuko shook himself awake and jumped up.

"Uncle!" he called as Iroh descended. "That's... no! Don't carry her like that!"

"Why not?" responded Iroh with one of his stupid grins on his face.

"It's not... _graceful_!"

OOOOOO

When Katara woke up about an hour later, things were much worse.

Much, much, much worse. Zuko kept saying 'much' as he described the situation, and she healed the back of her head absently as he continued his description.

A soldier walked in at that point, cutting Zuko off effectively as he stood up and demanded to know why he walked into a lady's room unannounced.

"This is the infirmary... sir."

"Noted," replied Katara for him, cutting off Zuko's probably irrationally annoyed response. "What's the status?"

She almost laughed as she heard herself speak. How ridiculous. _Status? _God. She was hanging out too much with the military type.

The soldier, surprisingly, turned to address her. "To put it bluntly... we're about to crash into a massive cliff."

There was silence.

"Oh."


	12. Chapter 12

**I'm back. **

**To explain my months of absence (I'M REALLY SORRY!) I was in a motorbike crash. Basically some old guy from another state didn't see me and drove right out from a side street, smashing into me while I was going up a main road. I was in hospital for a bit and even months later my foot is still messed up. I'm pretty mad over it, I can't play any sport anymore and it's really affecting my moods and stuff badly, not being able to exercise and do things normally. It really sucks.**

**Anyway, after I was as healed up as I was going to get, I was busy catching up with school and I struggled a lot with motivation for school and there was just zero motivation for writing fanfiction. Having just come across the story again now, I'm feeling like it's the time to get back into it. I don't know if anyone is still reading or has any interest! And I expect the quality to be much less than before after such a long time and such major stuff happening. But, at least I'm doing it.**

**This is very short (I haven't even edited this! I just found it and wrote this A/N and I'm posting it) and it's just to sate whoever is still reading this while I work on the next one and figure out where I was going with this. It's all a bit of a blur, I can't really remember my plans, but I'll get there.**

They were sprinting through the bowels of the groaning ship, heading for the Agni-damned deck again. The ship had been pretty much surfing the storm for some time now, riding along in the force of it at great speeds.

This was, as usual, a very bad thing – they would never be able to wait out the storm if they were _IN _the storm.

Muttering to herself about 'stupid full moon' and 'stupid storm ship' and 'stupid abduction' and 'stupid Fire Nation pricks trying to rule the world', Katara ran alongside Zuko. He felt a small amount of remorse at her being with him, since if they all died and she did too, it would be his fault. However, as he scaled the stairs and pushed open the hatch with a small noise of exertion, he was hoping that as a Waterbender she might be able to save them.

Moments later, the cliff was in sight - Zuko's hope vanished abruptly as he saw it.

It was like _forever _high.

"It just keeps getting better," he started through his teeth as Iroh, Katara, and himself peeked over the stairwell once again, "and freaking _better_, doesn't it."

"Yup," breathed Katara. They had no plan. They had no idea what to do. They would hit the cliff in a matter of seconds, and there was nothing they could do about it.

They were crowded at the opening of the stairs, looking over the deck at the massive cliff face ahead. Six or seven soldiers were jostling for a look behind them, and Katara turned to tell them to let up a bit so she could move... and then, they hit the cliff.

Right before their eyes, the front of the ship crumpled as though it was made of toothpicks. It simply buckled in on itself, crashing away to nothing and the cliff came straight at their faces.

Wow. As the soldiers started back down the stairwell, Katara reacted instantly and with a great deal of fear; hurling herself and all the surrounding soldiers overboard using the rain and the waves. They spluttered in disorientation as they surfaced, the waves battering them around in the water.

Instead of fruitlessly trying to swim to safety (which was miles away if it existed at all) they stared in horror as the ship crumble into nothing, the shouts of the people inside drowned out by the storm. Katara was too shocked even to cry as she watched the ship collapse.

As the storm pushed the bedraggled survivors towards the cliff, a few soldiers leaped out of various windows and portholes in not-yet-obliterated sections of the ship, and Katara whooped despite the situation as she saw Shun's frantic form leap out of the ship and fall into the water.

There were, however, pressing matters to attend to. Zuko found her in the water just as a massive wave pushed the whole lot of them right up to the cliff, and they didn't even have time to shout in preparation of the impact before they hit.

And a good thing, too, because 'OH MOTHER OF AGNI' and 'OH MOTHER OF LA' respectively would have been terrible last words.

For the hundredth time, they were saved by a freak coincidence as the wave swept them downwards through a small cave opening in the cliff. Expecting to simply hit the back wall of said cave, they braced themselves once more, but received the shock of their lives (again) when light became visible and they were swept helplessly into a raging river.

It wasn't a cave, it was a tunnel.

"This is the weirdest day ever," muttered Katara as she used her legs to keep Zuko and herself afloat with bending as they blew out of the tunnel and started flowing with the water downstream.

Or, as it happened, upstream – literally.

Katara spoke again. "And... why is the river going backwards?"

Everyone else had noticed it too. As the group treaded water while they were propelled along without any means of stopping, they marvelled.

The river was flowing uphill.

"We're at the North Pole."

"_What_," responded Zuko dangerously, and she felt him stop moving next to her.

"This..." started Katara in awe. "I know this place. I've been here. We're near the _North Pole_! How the hell did the storm blow us this far?"

"Ha ha, very funny," said Iroh from beside them, grabbing shamelessly onto another soldier to stay afloat. "Where are we really?"

"I'm serious," said Katara haltingly as they narrowly missed a large boulder in the river. "This is the Chai Meng River, the only up-flowing river in the world! It's a salt river," here she was cut off by another rock and she quickly pushed herself and Zuko out of the way with a hasty water blast, "and it runs near the North Pole!"

"You're kidding me," muttered Zuko. "No ship, no supplies, hardly any crew, and now we're at the most fortified Water Tribe on the planet."

"Most fortified Water Tribe on the planet out of the two Water Tribes on the planet," said Katara in mild annoyance. "Anyway, it runs up gently until it blends height with the cliff and thenooohh. Oh, ooooo_-_"

"What?" asked Iroh. "It gets up and then what?"

"Oh _nooo_-"she continued.She stopped abruptly and looked at the other two, her face set stonily, and Zuko sighed, not waiting for the bad news.

"Let me guess," he said. "We're about to go over a huge waterfall."

She nodded.

"Sharp rocks at the bottom?"

"Most likely."

"... bring it on."


End file.
